Yoga, anyone?

I decided to try something a little bit different today as a supplement to my other workouts. Many triathletes. while typically quite aerobically fit, have pretty lousy core strength and flexibility. I had always considered myself not to be particularly flexible, although apparently I'm not as bad as I thought. Core strength, however, I know is seriously lacking. I can't tell you how many years I've been saying to myself that I want to make yoga a part of the routine, or at least do it for a while in the off-season. Up until today I had done yoga I think four times that I can remember. Once at a Multisports.com camp in California where they had us all do it, and the instructors had to correct probably 60% of the poses I was doing. Twice when my friend Lisa hosted yoga nights at her house, but that was just before I moved to Phoenix so I only got to go the two times. Then once in September when another group of friends got together for yoga.

So I had some concept of what I was getting into, and I knew it certainly wasn't easy even though so often you see it on TV and it really just looks more like people stretching a lot. More often than not I get the shaky legs and/or arms going on from trying to hold a pose. However, I decided to go one step further and go for the hot yoga, or Bikram yoga in this case. There is a studio quite close by, the classes are 90 minutes and if nothing else maybe it will help me get used to sweating a lot in preparation for St. Croix. This all took place after a nice, hard trainer ride this morning, so today was filled with lots and lots of sweating.

I bought myself a yoga mat, feeling that a $25 investment there might make me more inclined to do it more often, and off I went. I thought that 90 minutes in there would seem like an eternity, but it actually went by pretty fast. And the ridiculous sweating wasn't so bad until the very end. My knees left me unable to perform a few of the poses, and I suspect that would be the case even if I wasn't currently suffering from some patella pain that is still keeping me from running (but getting better) My knees have not been happy for some time. I bought a 10-day unlimited trial to start, and I intend to take full advantage of it to get some core strength and sweat things out a bit more for the next couple of weeks. Hey, it can't be bad for me, right? I really have no idea if it makes a difference that it is really hot in the room or not. I do know that pretty much either way I sweat like crazy, but at least this way everyone else does too. My only objection is that the room is carpeted... which seems just plain gross, but I tried to ignore it.

Other than that, weather is fantastic today, looks to continue the rest of the week. My knee seems to be getting better even if I'm not running on it yet, but I can still get my biking and swimming in. And now I'm starving and have to find something healthy to eat and fill me up!