You're Wearing Those?

This morning I met Laura for a workout. Originally we were going to swim together, but she has some sort of swimming thing tonight, so she asked if we could ride cardio bikes instead. As an added incentive, we thought that we'd go back to the Battery Park City gym and cap off the workout with a session in their hot tub. In theory, this did not sound like the worst plan we've ever made. When I was getting ready this morning and putting on my biking shorts, Drew looked at me and asked, "You're wearing those?" I was so confused. Why wouldn't I wear biking shorts to ride a bike? Then he remembered that I was riding bikes instead of swimming and then it didn't seem so silly to him.

In actuality, it was 38 degrees when I left the house and it was raining. I walked to the subway, rode the subway for 20 minutes downtown and then walked 15 minutes to the gym (of course, it's still raining). I got there and Laura said that she'd meet me in the cardio area. I headed to see what we were dealing with since we hadn't checked out the cardio equipment during our last visit. Now, the reason for this biking session is because Laura has stress fractures in both her legs and can't run right now. So, because the bike was a critical part of this workout, I had called the gym yesterday to ask if they had bikes. They said yes. Then they told me that we couldn't take a class, but we could ride bikes. I assumed that meant that we couldn't take a spinning class, but I wasn't really sure what kind of bikes that meant that they had.

Um, it meant that they had a laughable selection of bikes. By selection, I mean that there were two. One was upright, more like a regular bicycle and the other was where you're seated (in an actual seat), where your legs are out in front of you. And the second bike, where your legs are in front of you had no foot straps for the pedals. I took one look at that bike and knew that I wasn't in the mood for that, so instead I decided to do the elliptical machine.

Now might be a good time to mention the tickers to the right of my blog. I definitely stole them from Kathy because I think that they're a really good way to keep track of mileage. Of course, Drew pointed out to me the other day that there is something wrong with the bike ticker because it seems to be stuck on zero. That's because I'm lame and haven't ridden my bike since the triathlon. It's also because right after the triathlon, Mother Nature decided that it would now be winter on the East Coast, and I'm too chicken to ride outside. Of course, that number could have gone up this morning, but it was not to be.

But, I killed it on the elliptical. Made me wonder what happened the last time I did it that I was going so slowly. I did the "variety" setting, so every minute or so it would change resistance on me. It went to easy as 2 and as high as 18. I gotta tell you, anything over 12 really slowed me down, but I think it was a good workout overall. I was definitely sweaty by the end of it.

When we were done with our cardiovascular activity, we headed down to the locker room to get ready for the hot tub. Laura wondered if we shouldn't take a cool shower, but we decided just to go and get in. The hot tub was not very hot. That might be a bit of an understatement. It was 92 degrees. That is NOT hot tub hot. After doing some Google research, it appears as though 102 degrees is the accepted temperature for hot tubs. I'd think anything warmer than your body temperature would be best. The last time we were there, it was really hot and wonderful and this time, not so great.

Even though we didn't have the best ending to our workout and we had to walk the 15 minutes back to the subway in 38 degree weather, at least it wasn't raining on the way back. I'm not sure I'd want to trek all the way down there again just to do cardio and have the hot tub ending be disappointing again, but we do have one more visit, so I might be willing to give it one more shot as long as we called first to make sure the hot tub was hot enough!!

Elliptical
Distance: 4.00 miles
Time: 42:58
Pace: 10:44/mile
Calories: 525
Maximum HR: 176
Average HR: 161