Entering the Pain Cave

Our friends Kris and Mark sent us (and Skippy) a gift a few weeks ago. It was a Spinerval DVD, number 33, titled Entering the Pain Cave. For those of you who don't know what Spinervals are, it's a training program that you can do on your trainer or a spin bike. My friend Steve, who at one point was an accomplished triathlete himself who was on Team Gear West, told me the day I got my trainer to invest in some of these DVD's.

Thankfully, our trainer came with one, which was Number 27, Threshold Test and Suffer Fest. We hadn't tried it yet though. Basically, we spent January just getting on the bikes, getting used to the trainer, and getting our cycling legs back.

Then T decided to be bold and enter the Pain Cave herself.

She described it to me as one of the worst feelings in the world. Brutal. Naturally, I was intimidated; yet I was interested. So yesterday, I decided to hop on the trainer for 45 minutes of pain.

And I was in pain.

I quickly realized that workout, only 45 minutes long, was one of the toughest I have ever done. Equivalent to the ride to Maroon Bells we did in the summer of 2009. It was hard, tested me in ways I've never been tested, and yet I rose up to the occasion.

Then I laid on the ground for a few minutes.

T took a picture of that and we'll have it up later today.

Gotta love the challenges of this year. :-)