A Bike Workout?

I have really been slacking with the photos recently! I guess when I haven’t been running for awhile it’s easy to fall out of the habit of taking pictures of every run/workout. Maybe because pictures of yoga and stretching in my basement wouldn’t be quite as pretty as pictures of trail runs! 😉

So this week I’ve been slowly easing back into running. Nothing longer than 6 miles so far and all hovering right around 7:30 pace. I’m still trying to keep up with all the yoga I was doing during my running break because I reaallllly don’t want to lose that flexibility that I gained.

Yesterday I took a no-running day and hopped on the spin bike in my parent’s basement. I’ve never been to a spin class before and when I use the stationary bike I generally just go at a steady state for 45 mins to an hour but yesterday I made up a little bike workout.Now I’m not a cyclist (evidenced by the fact that I needed spellcheck to remind me that “cycler” is not the correct term) or triathlete by any means but I do know that I really worked up a sweat with this workout and my legs pretty much felt like jello afterwards!

I started with a 10 minute warm-up and then went straight into some intervals by alternating 2 mins hard at a resistance of 6 and 2 minutes easy at a resistance of 4. I tried to mimic flat intervals during the first half so I stayed sitting for this entire time. After 5 minutes of easy rest I mixed in some “hill work” mostly because my butt was starting to hurt from sitting. I alternated between 1 min “standing” hard between a resistance of 10 and 12 and 1 minute easy sitting between a resistance of 5 and 6. I finished up with a 10 minute cool-down and I was absolutely drenched! And that’s obviously a sign of a great workout right?
While the bike isn’t my favorite thing in the world it is a really useful tool for fitting in workouts while you are injured or just getting back into running after a break. I like to do a few workouts on the bike in my first few weeks back to running because I get some speed in my legs without all the pounding that comes from doing running workouts.
And an update: So remember how in my “Why I’m Running 5K’s” post I mentioned that part of the reason for my running break was that I thought my iron levels were low? That was the first thing that popped into my head because I’ve struggled with in the past but since I’ve been taking iron for a month and I’m not feeling much better I started looking for other explanations. It was suggested to me that it might be mono (who knows how I got that!) so I’m going to go get some bloodwork done as soon as I can find a doctor and get an appointment. I’ll keep you updated!

Have a great Friday!

Do you go to spin classes?

What’s something that you do to help you transition back into running after you take a break?