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An admitted shoe geek waxes philosophical about running, triathlon, and life in general.
Comments welcome!


Wednesday, April 3, 2013

A good time was had by...

Well, I can't say all.

This past Monday was my first workout with the Rock Steady kids. I spent Sunday evening trying to put together a spin session playlist from my 80's rock (and obscure rock, at that) available to me in my laptop. All you spin class leaders out there, my hat is off to you -- that's not an easy task, coming up with appropriate music that is neither offensive (this was at a YMCA, after all, and with all minors), too slow, nor too fast. After spending an hour on my couch with headphones firmly plugged into my ear canals, a stopwatch in my hand, and trying to count out beats for 30 seconds, I finally gave up... and took my laptop downstairs. I set it up next to my trainer, and pedaled along with the music to get the cadence. I found that my earlier efforts had yielded less than a 50% success rate in finding music within the desired cadence range.

Sigh.

But introductions went well, at the very least.

Five kids showed up for this inaugural workout. Hopefully they return. It'll get better, I promise!

We did a nice group run workout, not really difficult, but with some form drills (which we may not repeat), and talked a lot. I asked several questions of the kids, trying to find out what they liked about triathlon, what they like to do, etc.

The indoor cycling session, though, may have been my downfall. I've always thought that most spin classes have NO resemblance whatsoever to real-world cycling. But I also found out that full-song-long intervals equals boredom, especially for the 12-15 set. Though I do weep for the future of humanity -- NONE of them even knew who Billy Joel is...

I did lay down the gauntlet for their season-ending race on Labor Day weekend -- any of them that beats me in that race will get something pretty cool as a prize. Immediately one of them asked me what it will be. Obviously externally motivated. I told him I didn't know yet, but that it would be nice. His reply: Just don't make it a gift card.

So next time will be different: My wife will be home from Illinois, and she has a MUCH better music selection; the cycling portion will not be a 45 minute high-cadence spin; the run won't be mostly form drills.

Hopefully some of them show up again.

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