Holy hills, Batman!

I joined the Brooklyn Triathlon Club a few weeks ago, and this week did my first group thing with them. There is an indoor triathlon coaching gym-esque thing in my neighborhood, and the club had reserved workout time. You bring in your own bike and hook it up to a trainer, which in turn is hooked to a computer that determines the resistence that you pedal against. There are eight trainers/computers/slots in total. And the computer has a virtual representation of a TON of bike portions of triathlons from across the country. They've got Ironmans (I don't think the plural of that is Ironmen, because it's not the men thats plural, it's the event itself. Right? It sounds weird), half Iron-mans, sprints and Olympic distances, time-trials, mountain stages, a few stages from the Tour de France, and more.

On Saturday, we did a mountain course. Mt. Wachusett, to be exact, which is actually a mountain in Massachusetts that my ex-girlfriend lives right by, so I've actually been to/seen this mountain before. I was like, "ooh! Mt. Wachusett! I know you! Be nice to me!"

Nice it was not. For those of you unfamiliar with the terrain in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and South Jersey, you would know that there are pretty much NO hills in this area. I was in trouble.

And ohmygod was I in pain. My body is not used to hills. While I maintained a solid 20mph on the bike course during my last triathlon, and am a pretty solid cyclist, these hills brought my average mph down to a measly 11.6. On the flats and downhills I kept myself between 19 and 26.5 (my max). But on one hill...a two mile climb with an incline up to 6.4%, I was down around 5mph. I think that, had I not been hooked up to a trainer, I would have fallen over. It was that bad.

So we rode for an hour, and I covered about 12 miles. HORRIBLE.

But, I did it. I went, I kicked my butt. My heartrate was around 177 the whole time, which is right in my cardio-building range. I burned 700 calories, according to my heartrate moniter, which I actually started 12 minutes late. So it was probably close to 750 or 775.

And then I went and drank a bunch of beer that night. Holiday party at my friends house. I'm not upset about it, and as long as I get to the gym tonight and tomorrow, and bring my bike and stuff home with me for the holiday, I think I'll be ok.