5 posts tagged “cycle u”

I went kayaking today and thanks to the 15 knots of wind got quite the workout on Lake Union. Thus I was quite hungry for lunch and ate quite a lot at Agua Verde, home of the all you can eat salsa bar.

After returning home, I went to cycling class and of course we had a tough day at Cycle U. Cycling hard works your abdomen and I was burping up chili and my stomach was irritated. Between intervals I was wondering if I should retire. And during intervals I didn't want to push too hard, else I'd throw up.

Although lunch was two and a half hours prior, maybe 4+ hours after a meal is necessary. Especially for Mexican food.

Although I've been feeling much stronger cycling this year my test today seemed to indicate, in terms of wattage, I'm about the same as I was end of last year. I did do better on a 5 minute test, about 5% improvement, but the same for 15. Which is disappointing, but there's some possibility I didn't test too accurately today. What you're trying to do in 15 minutes is really "lock in" at a constant rate, but I had stop and reduce my output bit by bit. So I feel if I just aimed a bit higher at the start, rather than be so ambitious I would have made a higher average. (I started off around 300+ watts but dropped to 260, and thus I ended up with an average of 269.) Anyway, that's how testing goes; you're off some days.

Last weekend I was in Vancouver for the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships. Hitomi and I took the train on Friday, which can be a maddeningly slow ride if you're in a hurry. On the way there I was trying to use an SSH connection over a VPN connection over a cell phone connection from my laptop and it would either be too slow or cut out inside tunnels or sporadically. So instead of feeling frustrated about Amtrak, I was frustrated at my connection.

Still, a scant 3-4 hours later, we arrived, went through customs, and had time for dim sum. We had a little time before the long program of women's figure skating.

There were about 24 skaters, and at 4-5 minutes apiece we were around until 10PM. Based on the scores of the short program the best skaters ("world class") were all at the end. Apparently, only a few skaters in the world can do (consistently) triple axel jumps. A good lot of them end up on their butts.

One difficult point was returning to the hotel. There mostly a lot of Asian (students?) who probably had no car waiting around with us at the bus stop for a ride downtown. Since it was late, of course very few buses were out and who ever heard of the city providing extra buses for events? So for all that waiting, it might have been faster to walk back.

Saturday was men's skating but we decided to arrive a bit later. We had a late breakfast which was really lunch, took the bus and saw a few hours of skating. Then we had time to walk along the water a bit and enjoy the sunset on English Bay. We ended up inside a not-so-great Korean restaurant on Robson Street, and after a bit more of wandering around we went into a Japanese cafe/dessert shop.

Vancouver is much, much busier than Seattle and much, much more Asian. Maybe 30%, if you're counting the people on the streets. I heard tons of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese chatter. As Hitomi puts it, it's not a great place to come for foreign exchange. (And I'd say the skating audience was about 30% Asian students as well. Lots of Korean and Japanese flags; maybe more than Canadian flags.)

Speaking of Asians, we went to see Grand Torino, staring Clint Eastwood and a bunch of Hmong refugees. I knew the ladies sold (dried) flowers at Pike Place Market, but I had no idea the boys were off joining gangs. A great movie, in several respects, but some of the characters were too sterotypical to take the movie very seriously.

Sunday was my favorite day of skating. It was a 2 hour exhibition program, with (more fun) music, lights, and happier skaters. The winners seemed elated, even the 3rd or 4th place finishers. And the routines weren't so jammed pack of jumps. A few jumps is interesting but after you see around 5-6 jumps and jump sequences (in just 4 minutes) it's not as cool, it's not artistic, but obviously done for racking up points.

The music and routines weren't schlocky like "Smucker's Star's on Ice" is, whose audience is frumpy, middle-aged women and their daughters with Wonder Bread taste. The nice thing about the exhibition is the skaters pick the music they like, which is at least a bit more contemporary, if not personal. (Side note: One skater picked music from "Mononoke Hime", but it wasn't one song, it was more like four or five tracks across different albums spliced together! I noticed this is quite typical, although maybe not that noticable with a longer classical number. I don't like hacked up music.)

I brought a number of movies to Calgary to watch, and I barely managed to watch one on Monday (at 11PM), given all the partying I did: Outsourced. A call center manager from Seattle (nice shots of Seattle!) is sent to India to prepare an Indian call center for handling calls for an American kitsch catalog. I thought they tried really hard to get in as many "funny" faux pas moments as possible. It just pains me to see the White Guy screw up over and over again in an Asian country: Couldn't he be bothered to read Lonely Planet India before arriving? (Requisite scene: White Guy tries to use a squat toilet: Hilarity ensues.)

More interesting is how the main character gains an appreciation and understanding of how India, the land of 1 billion, works. Based on my own experience, India (in the movie) reminded me a lot of Thailand in how chaotic it is, but yet there is a working system underneath all that.

Tuesday night, as I implied, was a party night. Post a long day of testing and tweaking, and post yet another restaurant locally renown for its hot waitresses, D.H. was hosting a party for several people in the Calgary office and a few of us traveling in from Seattle, the Bay Area, and Kansas City. D.H. brought out his acoustic guitar and his daughter. He also wanted to hear some of Momoi's music, since I had mentioned this hot springs tour I was on, so I played some, which resulted in mixed responses from the other guests who called it derisively "Pokemon music." Alas, it's an acquired taste.

Mostly I drank wine, but I did try the very Canadian Caeser, a mixed drink made with Clamato and vodka.

I was up until 2AM. My flight was 9:40AM the next day.

I didn't have much time to call Hitomi and I hoped she wasn't mad for that.

I slept a bit on the plane and I later had a nap on the couch. I was returning home early on Wednesday so I could make my Cycle U class. As it turned out, due to "cold weather," Seattle Schools were closed and so was my class. Thus most people were absent, save a few ladies (3), the owner/instructor and myself. I offered to lead the class as the instructor had other things to attend to. I happened to have brought my iPod so I could play my music. I played a mix of Tsugaru Shamisen and Utada Hikaru.

I shouted out "15 seconds to go for spin money" and whatever other ridiculous things Cycle U instructors say. You're doing the routine and can't be wordy, so what is said is to the point. I didn't want to be shouting "Let's go people!!!" but I was volunteering playing the part. In reality, the ladies were happy to have me call out the time remaining, target zone and cadence. I got more comfortable as things went on. They smiled at me! And then we also made some small talk about our plans for next year and this class and what not.

Post class, Hitomi and I had plans for a movie called The Reader. From a review: "It's not every 18-year-old who scores sex scenes with Kate" But in all seriousness: The main character's love interest (Kate) is eventually put on trial in German for locking up 300 Jews in a church during World War II and letting them burn to death when a fire breaks out.

Thursday was Game Night with Ian and Kevin and Stacy was also around. Due to the snow, I couldn't get over to Kevin's place and instead they came to my house. This I decided before I requested permission from Hitomi, and I got on her bad side again. We had pizza, opened a bottle a wine and chatted while Hitomi hid away upstairs. Stacy brought some homemade cookies which I appreciated.

I had a fitness test at Cycle U today.

Over 5 minutes and 15 minutes, your average output wattage is measured and provides the zone ranges (goals) used for training.

Ideally, it increases over time. I'm not exactly sure where it eventually (must) will plateau but my numbers went from 280 to about 315 for 5 minutes and from about 240 to 270 for 15 minutes. That's about a 13% increase after 5 weeks of training, so I'm pretty happy. It puts me in the range of 3.5-4 watts/kilo. Wikipedia has more on bicycle performance.

What is a watt? Putting "watts" it in caloric terms, my 5 minute "sprint" was: 315 watts * 300 seconds, or 22.6 kcal. Not a whole lot of energy I guess. Compare this to a car that produces 25,000 watts: Cars are very inefficient!

And I weighed myself and I've gained about 4-5 pounds the past 3 months. Which is great news, but I'd like to gain another 5 or so.

Post Aki-con, I went wearily to my first Cycle-U class. I was a bit skeptical, still after paying about $500 for the class, seeing I obviously I could cycle in my basement for free. But it's probably my first serious fitness program, post high-school P.E. really, that's having me focus for 2-3 hours a week. So I'll take it seriously and see where I stand at the end.

The only thing that's been a let down has been the music, which is "techno", which I like in some situations. Their techno's more ambiant, working on the computer music.

You bring in your own bicycle, which makes it easy to feel comfortable, and hook it up to their machines, which measure cadence and wattage, the later being the most significant measurement you follow. In the past few years, bicyclists are now training with wattage not target heart rate. It's very simple: You get a calculation of your 5 and 15 minute energy output and then your "zones" (ranges of wattage) are calculated. Then during the program you simply exert that amount of energy for some time.

Additionally, and this might be the only other varience in how you exercise, you cycle at different cadences, some very high or low to exercise different muscle groups.

So, I've been doing that plus working hard at my job, along with Hitomi who's working on some "secret" Nintendo manual. Speaking of Nintendo, Ian gave me Castlevania: Portait of Ruin and I finally got into it over the weekend. Saturday was cycling with Cascade and I did lots of singlespeed hill climbing, some 15% grades, but not a whole lot of distance. I'm being told that this program is 80-100% of the exercise I need.