Cycling Equipment/Training on Disney Cruise

kopride

I am going on a Disney Cruise with my wife and little ones. Anybody ever went on one that has some idea of what kind of equipment they have? Even a spin bike could keep me from going too far backwards. They say "state of the art" fitness center, but so does ever hotel I have ever stayed in, even if it has a circa 1985 Lifecycle and an exercise ball.

frenchyge

Enjoy!

kopride

LOL On second thought, does that cycling unit have any device to record power? And do you think I can spin my pedals on and have it work with my Sidi's

daveryanwyoming

Never done a Disney cruise, but I'll put money on it they've got better gear than a 20 year old Lifecycle. More and more hotels I stay in have ergs that allow me to run a manual workout and either dial in watts or at least dial in levels that translate to watts. I did a lot of work travel last year and only one hotel gym was lacking in that department.

Here's a couple of gym erg tricks:
- Since you're well versed in SST and pwr training, just skip all the canned workouts and run the erg in manual mode.
- Some require you to press a button for "constant calories" or "constant watts" vs. "bike" to switch to ergometer mode. This is great because you can switch off your brain a bit during intervals and play with different cadences without having to watch power all the time.
- Many ergs have pretty big jumps in power levels in my range of interest. The brand new ergs in my local gym jump from ~245 to ~290 to ~320 watts at three sucessive levels. Those are pretty big jumps. So when I ride that machine I play games like up for a couple of minutes down for a couple to get a midpoint average power and to mix things up every couple of minutes.
-Ergs are all over the map in terms of calibration, some feel just like my CompuTrainer or my PT equipped bike, some feel much easier. I go by how I feel after the first five minutes or so of my first interval. IOW, I go by RPE instead of trusting the displayed watts. And if possible I use the same erg every time I visit the gym. My favorite bike at my local gym feels "soft" 245 watts feels easy for an hour so I record those workouts manually in WKO+ but adjust the power downwards to reflect the lower RPE relative to my PT.

Good luck,
Dave

kopride

Thanks. As I said, as long as they have a decent spin bike, I should be able to do a SST workout based upon RPE. If they have a good erg, what a bonus

vetboy

I went on a Disney Cruise beginning of Dec 07. The fitness room had Lemond spin bikes - very adjustable and I was able to get set-up pretty well. They also had spin classes (I didn't go to any, but saw them on the schedule) if you like that sort of thing. The view is pretty cool because the fitness room is very high (I think it was the 9th floor) and right at the front of the ship. I pedaled the ship it into Nassau early one morning.

The biggest problem was dragging my fatty-food laden body to the gym - watch those buffets and free 24hour room service. You would think that being trapped on a ship would make lots of time for riding, but there is an astounding amount of stuff to do on that ship.

Joe