Spoiler Alert: I Got My "Good Job"!

Last night was my Spin90 class.  John is a great instructor and I've learned SO much from him.  However, he is not exactly the type to give a lot of "good jobs".  I have expressed to Abby that it would be really nice to hear a "good job" from John.  Abby has tried to help me understand that John is not that kind of motivator.  He is much more likely to continue to challenge his students rather than heaping praise.

There was a threat of rain, which I think helped to keep many of the regular students away.  We ended up with 7 students and 4 instructors.  That's a pretty great ratio!  I was excited about the opportunity for a lot of individualized coaching. 

John started the class by explaining that we were going to ride a loop that was extremely challenging and that included a massive climb.  He told us that this would be the hardest hill we've done in the class.  Someone asked if it was harder than Lawyer's Hill.  John laughed and said that this hill made Lawyer's look easy. GULP.

So we rode into the park and did a warm up on the rolling hills.  I quickly noticed that I was leading the pack of students.  It was evident that most of the normal fast riders were not there.  I really enjoyed being in the front of the group.  After the warm up, we gathered around and John gave us a little speech about getting up the hill called the Gun.  He told us to just focus on picking something in front of us like a mailbox or a tree or a crack in the road.  He said to just focus on getting to that object.  He said "just focus on one more pedal stroke".  So I am getting very, very nervous.  How bad is this thing? Are we going up a mountain???

The other challenging part to the hill was that we had to cross really rough railroad tracks before getting to the hill.  There were gates up so that we couldn't ride over the tracks...we had to get off our bikes and walk them around the gates.  So we start up this steep hill from a stand-still...and I'm still having a challenge clipping in on a hill!

Omce I got clipped in, I was the next to last rider.  I started in a very easy gear and just focused on spinning up the beginning of the hill.  Having never ridden this hill before has one advantage - you don't know what you're in for!  The bottom part of the hill was a steep incline, then you round a corner where it flattens out a bit.  On this part, I shifted down to a slightly harder gear to get some speed up.  It was still a very easy gear though so I was not expending too much energy.  By this point I had caught and passed everyone except the front 2 riders.

John was riding next to me for most of the ascent.  He wasn't saying much to me, which I took to be a good thing.  During the first steep incline, I started wheezing when I was breathing.  I remembered something that one of the instructors had told me about opening up my lungs.  Once I did that, my breathing got under control for the rest of the climb. 

At another point in the climb, it leveled out again.  At this point, I had caught the front 2 riders.  They assumed that the hill was over, but I saw the gleam in John's eye when he said "yeah sure it's over".  I knew there was more around the next bend.  I just focused on my cadence and kept on spinning.

At the top of the hill, my first thought was "that was it?"  Now, honestly, it was a really hard hill.  But I was able to climb and keep my cadence pretty close to 90 RPM the whole time.  It was a very long hill and seemed to go on forever but it wasn't any worse than the hill on Oella Ave during the 3 hour class.  I voiced this to one of the other instructors.  He smiled and said that my hard work must be paying off because that was a monster climb. 

We rode a loop that took us mostly downhill with some flat areas for a few miles.  Then we rode back into the park and hit Lawyer's Hill.  I was at the front of the pack when we hit Lawyer's Hill.  I know this hill like the back of my hand now after doing so many repeat workouts on the hill.  So I knew exactly what gear to hit, when to shift, when to ease up and when to push it.  John rode the hill next to me.  When I was almost to the top, John said "Karen when you get to the top, I want you to turn around and look at the fruits of your labor".  I assumed he meant to look at how steep the hill was, so my thought was "whatever...I know this hill".  So when I got to the top, he said "turn around" and I did.  I saw what he was talking about...the rest of the class was just rounding the corner.  I had pretty much kicked everyone's butt on that hill.  BIG GRIN!!

We rode another loop and ended up on Race Road.  John said for us just to ride Race Rd however we felt comfortable.  I decided to see how long I could hold 22 MPH.  About halfway down the road, Steve (one of the instructors) came up next to me and said "you realize that you're pretty much smoking everyone right now".  I grinned and said "yep!"  I was kind of beaming at that point.  John came up next to me and mentioned that my cadence needed to pick up...ugh...I wasn't paying attention and had let it drop to 75...and of course he noticed.

So John, Steve and one of the other instructors decided to race each other.  They took off sprinting and I picked it up too.  I wasn't sprinting and I definitely wasn't keeping up with them, but I also wasn't that far from them.  This felt good. 

After class, I was putting my gear away and racking my bike when John came over to me.  He said "you mastered those hills today."  WOO HOO!!!! While the exact words "good job", it was an amazing compliment from a man who gives very few.  I wanted to jump up and down, but I just said thanks and tried to act nonchalant.  I was pretty giddy the entire drive home.