Rehab United

Christine and I joined an early morning exercise class for the month of January called Power Hour. The class is held at Rehab United, a gym specializing in rehabilitation of injured athletes and overall sports performance. The power hour is M-F class that begins at O'dark thirty (6am) where we jump right into exercising. The gym and the overall workout routine is completely different that any other I've ever done. All the workouts involve multiple planes of body motion meaning that they've got you twisting and turning in all directions to work out your entire body.

We always start with a warm up running back and forth across the gym. Each lap is slightly different. The variations are

• Straight Run
• High front kick, short skip series, repeat
• High back kick, skipping series, repeat
• Side kick, skipping, repeat
• Knee rotate inward, skip, repeat
• Knee rotate outward, skip, repeat
• Karioka (SP?) which is twisting your hips back and forth with your arms twisting the other way across your body
• Side to side hop, sprint,
  
• Front to back hop, sprint

You get the picture. By they time you get through all of these, you are definitely warmed up. After the warm up each day has a either a strength, cardio or limbering focus.

Strength training includes

• Box steps
• Squats with and without weights. Usually across your body
• Waddling around in a squat position with resistance bands around your ankles,
  
• The dreaded ab roller. On your knees with your elbows flat on a rolling board. Roll it out then in in multiple directions. A real killer.
• Weighted ball toss, squats, etc.

Cardio training includes

• Jump Rope
• Elliptical
  
• Treadmill
• Excercise bike
• Suicides
• Running/hopping through very small hurdles, or ladder on the ground
  
• Other squatty ways of running around the gym.

Limbering means really funky things like

• Inchworms: Bend over at the waist putting your hands flat on the ground, keep your legs straight and inch them towards your wrists till you can't go no more. Then walk your hands forward, the move the feet up and inch your way across the room. Pain.
  
• Spider-Mans: Really low stretched out squat, move your back leg up to your hand, lunge out again, move your other leg up, repeat
• Bear walk: Hands and knees shuffle across the room
• Crab walk: Shuffle across the room on your hands and feet but with you back towards the ground.
• Rubber ball push ups. Lay your stomach on the big rubber blue ball and roll forward on your hands until the ball is now at the front of your ankles. Do a push up and roll back on the ball until your stomach is on it again. Repeat
• Rotating squats. Front, back, sides, backs, etc.
  

I've never worked so hard in a gym. The thing is that we are always doing something different which makes it very interesting.

We've survived our first week and are pretty sore and generally beat up. I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

Why I love Google Earth

I took a short 20 miler after work today. I normally work 1/2 days on Fridays and today I was actually able to get out on time so I took a ride repeating most of the route around Mission Trails Regional park that I last posted about. Here's a Google Earth image from part of the route.

















You get a real feel for the type of terrain this route is in. I climbed just over 2,000 feet in the 20 miles so it is quite hilly. Depicted is the path along Highway 52 up and through Mission Trails Regional park. This was one of the nicest rides I've been on in a while.

Three quarters of this ride is amazing. Unfortunately, the last quarter is through very congested streets requiring you to bypass several freeway entrances. The high speed of the vehicles and the heavy traffic makes this a risky endeavor. I'll keep looking for the best route.

New Route

Christine and I went hiking a couple of days ago at Mission Trails Regional Park here in San Diego. Along the way, I noted that there is a brand spanking new separated biking lane along Highway 52. The bike lane is separated from the highway by a continuous length of concrete dividers and the path looked recently paved. I've been trying to find a East/West route in this neck of the woods for a while since it is very near where I work. Today, I decided to have a little adventure to check it out.

I geared up and left my apartment. It was a nice sunny day but there was still a little chill so I took my arm warmers and wore a base layer beneath my jersey. I took the normal route towards my workplace down into Mission Valley at Fairmount Ave to cross under the Interstate 8 and made my way along the Qualcomm Stadium bike path before climbing out of Mission Valley on Ruffin Road to Kearny Villa Road. There is a entrance to Highway 52 on Kearny Villa so I made my way to it. Lo and behold there was a sign that said, no bikes or pedestrians allowed. Hmmm. The bike path entrance must be futher east. Did a bit of backtracking to Clairmont Mesa Blvd and headed east to Santo Road where there is another entrance to the 52. Along the way, I meet a really nice guy, Dave who is also out for a Sunday ride on his Lemond bicycle, just like me. We chat a bit and it seems that we are going the same way so we continue on. There is in fact and entrance to the bike path off of Santo Road which we take and proceed eastward. The path is smooth and very safe although the noise of the cars whizzing by across the barrier made me flinch a couple of times. The first part of the path is about 3 miles of steading climbing followed by a mile of a really nice downhill. The bike path ends at Mast Road and the entrance to Mission Trails Park. Luckily, Dave knows the way and I follow him north and cross under the 52 one street, make the right turn and end up going southward along the eastern border of the park. Eventually we hit Mission Gorge Road which is the southern border of the park and start returning west. Following is a very steep one mile lungbuster climb. Dave breaks off and I'm riding solo again down Mission Gorge. From there it's back to Fairmount and then home. The whole ride was a nice 25 mile loop from my apartment and would probably make a good 10-mile lunchtime ride from work.

Totals were

26.06 Miles
2040 feet of climbing
Average Pace of 14.8 MPH
1905 calories burned

Here's a map

2008 Ride Totals

This post was inspired by a recent thread in a vintage bike enthusiasts forum I read where the members totaled their mileage for the year and made 2009 riding resolutions.

Reviewing my training logs from my bike computer(s) it looks like I rode a total of 3,432 miles in 2008 which averages out to 66 miles per week. Not too shabby. In 2008 I also completed 3 century rides including the two I did with Team in Training.

In the coming year, I'd like to bring my total mileage up to 4,000 miles. I'm hoping to do this by riding to work at least 1 day a week to go along with my normal riding schedule.

Starting the New Year out Right

Took another 40+ mile ride on New Years day with some of my TnT friends. We started out at UCSD and rode up the coast to Carlsbad to the famous Starbucks turnaround point. Not much to report but the weather was much nicer than yesterday. Riding was Bruce, Rick, Christine, Dave and myself.

Totals were

41 Miles
1780 feet of climbing
Average Pace of 14.2 MPH

all good for 3003 calories burned.