Spinning class: Last Train to Lhasa

Three posts in two days - trying to catch up with my class profiles before I head off on holiday. My motivation behind this was relatively simple: a varied but comfortable ride, choosing particular tracks that I wanted to use for a while now (hence my name for the ride, my particular favourite of the moment).

As you'll see from my HR profile below, the start is an easy warm-up, followed by a comfortable flat road that takes us into our aerobic zone (see marker 1 on the graph). Then the road gets bumpy and we take a few jumps out of the saddle at a fairly stable HR (marker 1 to 2). This takes us to a long climb, the start of which should feel comfortable - the idea is to start at a steady resistance with the idea of keeping it while the pace picks up, along with HR (mark 2 to 3); as we won't want HR to get out of control, it's necessary to resist the temptation to attack the climb or we'd have to lower resistance halfway through the climb. A very short breather before another bumpy road, with 4mins of jumps (mark 3 to 4), which will really work on our glutes and hamstrings - the choice is to do as many or as few as you wish. This is followed by a much needed recovery before the final flat road to the cool down (mark 4 to end); the recovery helps to re-group and plan the final 8-min stretch of road. The option I give is to keep a steady cadence but to increase resistance gradually as we get closer to the end.

Warm up - 3 mins
Seated flat road - 4.5 mins
Jumps - 4 mins
Slow to fast climb - 10.5 mins
Jumps - 5mins
Recovery - 2.5 mins
Seated flat road - 8.5 mins
Cool down - 6 mins

Profile:

Playlist:
Shanti - Banco de Gaia
Soweto Daal - Wasis Diop
Fill me in / 7 Days / Walking away - Craig David
Heaven - Emer Kenny
Last train to Lhasa - Banco de Gaia
Easter song - A man called Adam