Tough Love, The Treadmill & Essential Abs

I wanted to make a positive start to my training week today, so decided on an indoor bike workout, treadmill session, followed by the second workout of week four in the Essential Abs program. I tend to log my workouts Monday –> Sunday which allows me the opportunity of making up any shortfall in my weekly mileage – probably not the smartest training technique, but it’s been quite effective in the past.

I started with 45 minutes on the indoor trainer. Riding inside is not the most exciting activity, so I usually follow one of Troy Jacobson’s excellent Spinervals workouts – today I decided on his 13th DVD, Tough Love. Unbelievably, Tough Love is a 3 hour workout, which makes it a really useful training tool for a century bike ride or Iron Distance triathlon. I remember doing the whole 3 hour workout a couple of times when I was training for Ironman USA back in 2004. I can assure you Tough Love is a perfect title for the DVD!

Tonight I was very pleased to be just riding the first 45 minutes. After a quick warm up, the workout progressed into 3 x 10 minutes sessions with a couple of minutes recovery thrown in for a good measure. For the first and third 10 minute block, Coach Troy has you alternate between a minute in an easy gear/high cadence (number of pedal strokes per minute), and a minute in a tougher gear/low cadence. The middle 10 minute block alternates between a minute seated in a hard gear, with a minute standing in the same gear – this one is a real quad burner!

As soon as the 45 minutes were over, I traded my SIDI cycling shoes for my New Balance running shoes, hit play on the DVD player and hopped on the treadmill. The Time Saver II DVD features 3 x 30 minute speed workouts designed to improve speed and form. I chose Workout C which is called the “Speed Combo” and includes several 30 second intervals at a high speed and elevated incline. The recovery time is quite generous and allows your heart rate to recover nicely, but before you know it Coach Troy tells you to crank up the speed/incline for several one minute speed blasts.

I think the 30 minutes finishes with a couple more 30 seconds intervals, but I must be honest, I was quite fatigued, zoned out and just following the DVD towards the end, so I can’t really remember specifics of the workout. I do know I needed 5 minutes of cool down just to get my heart rate down to a comfortable level 🙂

After a refreshing drink of ice cold water, I decided to finish the evening off with another Essential Abs workout – this time Week 4, Workout #2, which is made up of 17 reps of the following exercises:

Hip Up
Reverse Crunch
Crossover
Oblique Crunch
Crunch: legs up
Crunch: feet first
Superman

All in all, a challenging but enjoyable 90 minutes of exercise and a great start to the week. The Spinervals and Runervals DVDs are a great series of indoor workouts, and will really bring out the best in you!