So Tuesday night was the infamous 45′ Yoga-Spin workout. Hah! I laugh at you puny mortals who fear this workout! Sort of.

I’m not going to lie, this is a tough, tough workout — it is designed to see how hard you can push yourself, and those are always tough as, in some ways, their goal is to always make you fail, albeit to fail less badly than you did the last time you did the workout. However, this particular workout falls pretty much right in my wheelhouse: moderate length bursts of leg strength.

The workout itself is pretty straightforward. First you do a bit of yoga, primarily stretching, to get the hammies and lower back warm and awake, then you climb on the bike to do five sets of three-minute threshold intervals, this is then capped off with a 12 minute power yoga session that drops the last straw on your proverbial camel’s quads. The intervals are done in successively tougher gearing with the goal being maintaining 100+ RPM cadence on the pedals the entire three minutes. I was able to do this for the first three intervals, without much of a problem.

The third interval started getting rough towards the end, but I didn’t really need to push myself. It was the fourth interval where I broke. After about 90-120 seconds in the fourth interval, I just blew a gasket and had to stop pedaling. Not slow the pace, but actually stop for 10-15 seconds before I caught my wind and was able to finish the interval strong. Fortunately I fared somewhat better on the fifth interval.

On the fifth interval, with the toughest gearing yet (IIRC it was 53×14), I was able to keep pedaling for the entire three minute interval, and I was ably to do it just a hair under the 100+ RPM target the entire way (I averaged 97 RPM for that interval). While this was, technically, a failure, for me it was a victory in my sights. I was so close to beating these intervals that I’m just itching to get my shot at them in 10-ish days or so when the yoga-spin comes round again. This time, I’ll want to finish all of the intervals at 100+ so I can move on to harder gearing for the third go-round.

So I was pleased with my performance the first time through this run, at least on the bike. The yoga is another story. I am so damn inflexible that one can think of me as the anti-Gumby (call me Ybmug).

Combine that with my appalling weakness everywhere but my legs, and you’ve got the makings of a yoga-nightmare. I can’t touch my toes, my hammies and back shriek as I transition from down dog to up dog, my glutes and core seem utterly lost when I require their assistance to maintain my balance, and my shoulders and neck are so tight and weak that I can’t even lift my arms over my head for any significant period of time before cramping and shaking. I let myself wilt into a wreck, and now I’m paying for it as I try to regain a hint of what used to be my youth and vigor. If only I knew how bad it would feel now as I was snarfing down that pizza back then. Oi.

Making matters even more fun were last night’s festivities. What started out as a fairly simple evening of body-weight exercises and some simple spinning turned into an adventure when on the very first body-weight move (a reverse lunge), my left quadriceps tightened up like a guy wire in a gusting wind, and refused to loosen up for what is going on 21 hours now. I was able to complete the workout by skipping the reverse lunges with my left leg, going slowly on the lateral lunges in both directions, and frying the hell out of my hamstrings and glutes by relying on them to get me through the final spinning part.

I’m hoping this doesn’t affect my workout today or tomorrow. I’ll do what I can, but I’m not going to put myself in danger of shutting down for weeks because I was stupid and overdid on an injured leg. Friday night I’ve got my first massage in more or less forever scheduled, and I’m hoping my therapist can help unclench my leg if it’s still grumpy, as well as work on all of the rest of my broken bits (though he won’t have nearly enough time for all of that this appointment).