Lactate Tolerance

I decided to go to a cycle class on Thursday night. I didn't know who was taking the class as I hadn't been to this one in like a year. I was about to leave when I got a call from my mum saying that I needed to drop my little brother off to her because he needed to go to the doctors and she couldn't get home because of traffic. So I was like 'great, i'm going to miss my class now'. So I took my cycle shoes out of my gym bag and was just going to do cardio. But when I got to the gym I realised that I could probably still make the class. I hate to do cycle without my shoes, but I wasn't going to let my lack of cycle shoes stop me from doing it, I was determined to do this class. I went up to the cycle room and there was a note on the door saying that the instructor was going to be 5 minutes late. So that was good, I wasn't going to miss anything. The bike I always use was taken, so I went to the other side of the room and set up a bike, alas it was clunking, I moved to the next one, but one of the knobs was broken, so I went to the next row back, that bike was clunking too. I was like 'Ok, someone is trying to tell me not to do this class'*. I gave up and sat on that bike anyway.

10 minutes later the instructor turned up and he told us that he is a former australian olympian rower and will be giving us a workout called the 'lactate tolerance workout' that elite athletes use, and that he guaranteed it would be the hardest workout we would ever do. Boy was he right. I have not done cycle in a few weeks, so I knew I was going to suffer more than normal anyway, this absolutely KILLED me. I mean, it was great, but I barely completed what we were supposed to and I felt like I was going to pass out. That is not an exaggeration. I do love these workouts though, and I REALLY pushed myself, I felt so invigorated driving home afterwards.

The workout was a 33 minute workout (plus warm-up and cool-down) and had 2 levels - Light or off (80%), and On (95%). My off definantly wasn't 80%.
The format was -
1 min ON, 3 mins OFF,
2 mins ON, 3 mins OFF,
3 mins ON, 3 mins OFF,
4 mins ON, 2 mins OFF,
5 mins ON, 1 min OFF,
6 mins ON.
The point of the workout is to build up the lactate tolerance in your system. It was insane, and really hard, but I will definitely be using this one again. I will try to increase the intensity of my OFF's because on thursday they were like 20% or something.

*I think all those signs were telling me not to do the class, because when I got home from the gym I found out my little brother was in hospital. I won't go into it though, he is fine now :) Kinda scary though huh...

On to Friday.

The house was full of baking smells on Friday thanks to my mum's baking :) She made cranberry muffins. I tasted of course, and they were REALLY good.

She made them for some markets at my little brother's school, so only a couple were actually left for the house. I went down to the markets for a little while and bought some jam. I only had a little bit of cash on me, so couldn't buy any of the AMAZING jewellery down there. Another thing you should know about me - I LOVE jewellery. Especially Portmans, my favourite shop ever. I had a taste before I bought the jams and they were really good. They suggested stirring them through yoghurt - sounded like a good idea to me! I bought Vanilla and Pear (not as sweet as I thought it would be, and that was a good thing), and Banana, Lime and Cinnamon. I know that might sound gross to some people, but I love bananas, so anything that has banana in it I am up for. Hopefully they will last a while :P.

I had work this morning (saturday) and I was so tired from the last couple of days, so I went and got a takeaway coffee from Jimini's Cafe at Hornsby Westfield. They have really good coffee (Dane's). I don't know what it is, but I just love takeaway coffee. Even though I could have easily come home and made exactly the same thing and saved $4.20, it's just DIFFERENT. It feels like a treat getting a takeaway coffee, having a professional make it and everything. It's hard to explain why I love it so much. I just love taking it and drinking it in the car in my little takeaway coffee cup :D. Haha ok i'll stop now.

I got the Lean Body Gourment Cookbook by Sue Heintze from Ideal Bodies Online. There are some great recipes in there, can't wait to try them :). I feel like cooking something today. I will post the results if I do!
Till next time.....

Nicola xx