Thursday, February 18, 2010

Cleveland Wrap Up

I've been a bit hyper lately and it's because of one thing as far as I can tell. That one thing is the fact that I'll be in Tucson in nine days. I'm not over-exaggerating here. I am craving some warm bright days and long time in the saddle without wearing eight layers of clothing that takes 45 minutes to put on. I HATE wearing booties. Just the stupid name alone, booties, kills me. OK, enough whining. It's not camp yet so I can bitch a little bit. I'm also way behind on training at the moment and Tucson will snap me straight. I'll be paying me dues there, but I actually look forward to it.

I know I'm a bit behind here, but wanted to jot down the final day of Cleveland Winterfest while it's still in my mind. It was, in my opinion, a very cool day of camp! The final day of the camp, where many were tired from the previous two days, yet we still had a long indoor training ride to do. We met bright and early at Kyle's gym "Euphoria" to set up everyone on their bikes in the spin gym. A big thanks once again to Kyle for letting us use his state of the art facility. Letting us use the place was huge! The fact that it was really cutting edge was a big bonus. Ive been training people for twenty years and have set up my fair share of fitness centers and gyms and this place is really great. If you are in Cleveland or visiting, check it out. It's right near the airport. I was on a spin bike leading the session and Jay asked if I had planned a good playlist for the session and I laughed and said "Jay, we don';t plan anything here! Everything is spontaneous and it seems to work." The fact is that Angela is more than organized and made the agenda flow so smoothly. But I wasn't lying about not having a playlist set up. I had my two ipods and just let it roll. I'll give up another secret and that is that I didn't have a bike session in mind before we started to ride on Sunday. I like to assess the group and see where they are at and also see what I feel like throwing out there.

As we warmed up spinning along, I asked Liz, the mvp camper from day one, if she wanted to say a few things about the charity "Girls With Sole" that she was raising funds for in her IM quest (she's training for the Rev 3 IM in Ohio). She was eloquent and confident in her description of her charitable organization and her story also blew me away. If anyone is actually reading this, please do me a favor and look up her charity "Girls With Sole" and make a small contribution. I know - trust me, I hate soliciting. But us fortunate people can contribute a few dollars to a charity that raises funds and awareness for young foster girls.

We then got on with the session and I put a lot of quality in there and we rode for three hours! This wasn't just a three hour indoor spin. Again, I put a lot of quality in because i don't believe in long spinning indoor training rides - you know, just sitting on the trainer to log time in the saddle. I feel it's extremely boring and also a waste of time if you could get in some solid quality in a shorter time frame. This three hour ride was equivalent to 4.5 hrs on the road. The time seemed to pass quickly though. Well, at least it did for me, but everyone seemed to enjoy the session, whether they liked my music or not! We only had one mishap, when Mikey Donuts wiped out on his rollers. yes, he showed up with rollers. I think he did this just to entertain us though.

A brick run off the bike followed by a camp wrap up and I was off to the airport to catch my flight home and hopefully make the kick-off for the Superbowl (I made it with less than one minute to spare).

Based on the feedback that Ange and I received and the fact that I had a blast, I plan on putting on a Winterfest Camp here in CT in late March.

Cheers,

EH

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