canklecat

I go back and forth between legs and lungs. Between the two, burning lungs feels more painful than burning legs. After awhile the legs go beyond burning and just go numb. But the lungs -- actually it's probably the diaphragm and intercostal muscles -- never get numb. It just keeps hurting worse and worse.

For me, to improve my cardio I have to spin as fast as I can sustain for the designated trainer session, depending on whether I'm doing intervals or sustained steady efforts.

That's pretty easy at home. I just set up a timer with voice prompts, and watch movies or TV series. Bike training videos bore me. I mostly binge watch sci-fi or good distractions.

But off the trainer I was still struggling so I switched to mashing harder gears outdoors, including more extended standing to pedal. A couple of blocks away is a quiet neighborhood with several parallel half-mile 1% and 2% grades, so I try to stand to pedal the entire distance at low cadence, high gear. That strengthened my legs a lot.

But I've neglected my trainer sessions so my cardio has suffered. Recently I've lost a step on some outdoor segments that used to be easier, mostly because I haven't done the high cadence cardio training for a couple of months.