Too hot and my legs are still way out of it. Somewhat surprised how bad they are right now. Guess the weekend still taking its toll. Glad I didn't run this morning... would have been very frustrating. Got out there this afternoon and it was a little over 90 degrees. Thought I was fine the first few miles, although sore. Then the wheels came off. For no apparent reason. Lots of leg pain. Just total stiffness. Oh well... hobbled in, am blogging it and will forget it.
First CompuTrainer ride in a while. Saw that Paul's back on his so, you know, had to be done. It had been upstairs. Now it's downstairs. Put the tri bike on it today. Nothing major. 187 avg watts, no heart rate. Hoping to run tomorrow morning but my legs aren't feeling fresh at all.
Ah, the Cartersville Century. A yearly ride. That I hate. But always seem to talk myself back into the next year.
Day started with me getting there about an hour too early.
Then I realized I had a flat tire. Have I mentioned that the Cartersville Century never goes well for me?
Hung with the lead pack for the first 50 miles which was what I did a few years ago. Actually, I held on longer this time and felt better but absolutely needed water at the bank rest stop.
Overdid the salt. Accelerade in the bottles. Salt tabs pre-ride. PowerGels with 4x sodium. My stomach shut down at about mile 30 and without water to dilute my innards I knew things wouldn't get better. Mark and I bit the bullet and grabbed some water while Linenberg and a now much smaller posse kept going.
Saw Keith at the bank but Marc and I were quick stopping it. Ended up leaving the stop in about two minutes. But now with only one other dude. About seven miles later my stomach gave up. Actually, that's not right... a second group did form and I rode with them for a bit but just didn't have the stomach. I wasn't processing water and was dehydrating.
So I backed off. And then I got lost. I thought I was following the CC markings but suddenly I found myself at the Bud Plant and the end of the ride! Except... it was the end of the wrong ride... I guess Beautiful Backroads. Suck.
Lots of shifting issues today. Rear was perfect. Front had problems. Could go to small chain ring no problem but going back up was a lot of work. I put my chain over and onto my pedal about twenty times. Saved it every time though. Just dramatic with all of the rollers.
In the end I was pretty close to the numerically pretty but overall irrelevant average speed of 20 mph. I didn't slow to a crawl. But I did have to slow to let my stomach settle. Unfortunately since I was off course I didn't get any more cold water. Suck part deux.
When I overheat I feel like my skin is on fire and like my body is about to explode. It's just that hot. Even though it was only about 88 or 90 out. It was humid and I was dehydrating.
Bonky eyes for the final ten miles. Lots of wrong turns through town but I eventually random walk algorithmed myself back to the car.
Did not feel good. Didn't barf but had the impulse. Bonky eyes. Way overheated. So I turned on the a/c and did what comes naturally.
Sent an inappropriate message to twitter, facebook and about 40 other social networks. Sorry ladies. The phrase "my va***a is broken" isn't appropriate in any context.
Grabbed some sprite and made my way home. Zoned out for a good while. Nice headache now. Unable to sleep... kinda that restless awake/nodding off feeling.
Overall happy with the ride. My training's been crap so far this year and I'm glad that I was able to hang at all with the lead group. Not the century finish with the lead pack I'd have liked but I have much more perspective these days. Plenty of time to add fitness between now and November.
Shouts to Cappy, Suobs, Keith, Linenberg and everybody else out there!
I hate the Cartersville Century. But I'll do it again and so should you. It covers a beautiful part of Georgia, it's well supported and there are always great people out.
Later I heard reports from people that it was "a bloodbath" at the front with people getting pulled, puking and otherwise exploding all over the place. Heat can be dangerous. Heat plus spandex can be deadly. Careful out there peeps!
Quick test ride today. Yesterday I worked the SRAM Red rear derailleur... tonight I worked the front. It's not perfect... my chain's old but I'm not in the mood to get a new one. Saw Dave Stewart right at the beginning and we rode for a while. Warm out today.
Wanted to get out onto pavement with the new SRAM Red before the weekend ride. The guys at Smyrna Bicycles really cleaned up the shifting. I thought I was enjoying it on the trainer... I really enjoy it on the road. Crisp shifting. Better fit... in fact I switched to a longer and more stable stem which feels great too. Rode out to mile 15 and turned around. About 19 out and 20.4 back in. Warm but not terribly hot.
Quick ride today. Quick blog post. Made the switch to SRAM Red for $160 via some good deals on eBay. Only swapped shifters and rear derailleur. Like that brake lever doesn't shift. Shifting feels very crisp. Like feel of horns. Can feel how much lighter it is on front end... about 350 grams less... 3/4 lb... wow. Love the hidden cable routing. Don't think I'll have much trouble learning the shift mechanism. After the ride I dropped the bike at Smyrna Bicycles so that the experts could check my work... great group over there... if you're in smyrna check them out!
Heat training in the garage again. Only lost 3 lbs though (much less than lawnmower training) so obviously I wasn't pushing it hard. Worked something like intervals tonight... but free form... hit it hard for a while then relaxed.
May have identified one of the culprits in my knee pain... saddle height. I noticed that the seat had slipped down about 1/3 of an inch. And I had already been riding with it set too low. Set it up an inch, felt better about the form and felt less pressure on the knee.
Now what to do about tomorrow? My normal Wed long run day. But I still have this knee pain. And I'm doing Cartersville this weekend. May opt for something less than the long run.
Heather's training for the Peachtree so we got up and took the fam to the comet. I wasn't in the mood, battling server issues. But we had a good run. Heather listened to her music and ignored me. I pushed the kiddos while listening to a steady stream of "On Your Left"s. Very humid and muggy even at 8am... we sweat out 82 gallons of water each. After the run I took out my frustrations on a stump with the chainsaw. Knee update? Twingy pain early in the run moving to pounded out numbness later in the run. Nothin' to worry about. P.S. who was it that said "Hi Joe" from the bike, riding with his wife/girlfriend (I assume)? Sorry I didn't recognize you!
Hamstrings still really sore from the weekend ride. Today worse than yesterday, which is odd for me... normally i get the 24hr DOMS. Took it easy. Also nursing a bit of a knee issue. Based on this workout I should bail on tomorrow's long run. Which I hate doing but I've got to let the logical side prevail every now and then.
07:30:57 AM: Going long today. Listening to audiobook Bonk about sex and science. About an hour into ride and topic of said book plus spandex has not been an issue. Taking it very easy today. Forgot to start heart rate mon so won't have accurate time for today... which is great... no numeric pressure to hit any specific pace. Getting hot today so I want to get as many miles in early as possible. So far it's a ghost town on the comet. I'm at mile 20.
08:12:43 AM: At big tunnel mile 31. Ride going as planned. Humid out.
08:46:05 AM: Out past rockmart at what used to be the end of the comet trail before they paved it all the way to alabama. Warming up.
09:54:16 AM: At halfway point of today's ride... 56 miles. Went harder last hour. Shouldn't have given the hole of pain I always find the first long ride of the season. Definitely warming up as the morning haze burns off. Listening to Garden State soundtrack now.
10:59:19 AM: mile 72 of ride, only way home is to pedal my happy ass the 40 mi back. sun out, warm, humid. garden state soundtrack on the ipod.
10:59:58 AM: old aviator sunglass dude spotted. he's always out here.
12:17:29 PM: mile 92, short 20 to go. balls hot out, or feels that way. i smell like ammonia... protein breakdown. rage against the machine on the ipod.
01:30:34 PM: 112 miles done in a little under six hours... no explosions or drama... good stuff.
It's hot in the garage. Hotter than I had expected. But the bike was down there and I wasn't in the mood to move everything upstairs or inside. So hotbox garage it was. Sweat a bunch, as you can imagine. Warmed up and then did a simple exertion every five minutes until the end. Something of a recovery workout.
I had one performance goal on this run: go slower than the last few 23 mile outings. The last few seasons I've done my 20+ milers at a very slow pace... north of 9:00min/mi. To reduce muscle damage and facilitate fat-burning aerobic growth. Then earlier this year I ran 3:20ish. Last week I ran 3:20ish. So this week I decided that if I held a faster pace on these runs throughout the summer I'd risk overtraining. Or burnout. I was actually more worried about burnout. If I get caught in the trap of always trying to beat last week's time I'll eventually become frustrated as I add miles to the rest of my program and experience residual fatigue.
So, go slow. That was the plan. And I held the heart rate in the 130's for the first hour. And I averaged 148bpm on the day. But generally I was running a pace that wasn't recreational as I had hoped. I ended up yet again beating last week's time by finishing in 3:16 (last week around 3:20). Faster's good, right? Well, yes, if I'm doing it at the same heart rate. No if I'm having to work harder. I'm not doing these runs for time... I'm doing them for training so that when I get into a race I can have a lower time.
I was just enjoying running today. Lately, for the first time in months, I've been running/cycling/swimming with clear lungs. Which is awesome. I got carried away. It happens. Next week I'd like to be closer to 3:45 on the run.
Humid and sticky out today. Lots of sweating. Drenched only an hour in. Good run.
Went a little harder than planned but it's the first workout all year that my lungs and heart haven't been working way too hard. For the first time I felt like my legs were the limiter and that just felt great. I don't know if it was the bronchitis or my colds or a simple lack of conditioning. But this felt good. Didn't want to go too hard as I want to run tomorrow and despite feeling good I'm nowhere near any resilient level of fitness... that comes later in the season... the ability to beat myself up day in and day out and only over weeks break down. At this point I'd probably be good for a few back to back workouts before I bonked. So there you have it, some progress. Now I don't want to get sick! Just a week ago I didn't much care. Now I can see some progress and want to keep on the train.
In the pool. The one with the water. And the lines on the bottom. I did what I like to call back and forth swimming. Near the surface. Over one of the lines. I'll draw a diagram. Then a little core strength workout.
Feeling a good bit of soreness in the quads yesterday I decided on a rest day and started to figure out what to do today. Why not a training half ironman? And so it was.
Into the pool pre-dawn for some laps. Ended up a couple minutes slower than a similar half ironman day early last season. Just no time in the pool yet. 39 minutes.
Then onto the bike. Silver Comet. Nice day. Arm warmers. Rode harder than I had planned on riding but I wasn't out of control. Then, I got a klingon. One of those guys that you pass and then suddenly they're sitting on your wheel. Not a problem, of course, and I welcomed the company.
What's interesting is how I immediately jumped into race mode. Little pains disappeared. Pacing, which had been variable, was suddenly rock steady. And I was going faster. I was kind of surprised by the change in demeanor. I guess he eventually fell off. But I got a nice boost for the remainder of the ride.
Took seven minutes off of last year's time. Training time, though. So, nothing to draw conclusions from. I ended up with 56 miles at 2:39. Still a good bit above what I'd want to do in a race.
Then off onto the run. Sun was out. Humid. But not overly hot. Just felt that way. I did my usual out too hard. Mini bonk at the fourth mile when I decided to slow it down. I was sweating a lot more than I had expected to (didn't carry water) and was probably dehydrated. Gulped down a bunch at the silver comet depot.
Just steady pacing from there to the end. Averaged 8:00/mi on a run of 13.1 miles. Darn, coulda had a seven something with one second... lol.
Saw Dave at the end of the bike. But I didn't yet realize that the klingon had left me so I didn't stop to chat. Also saw him when I was going out on the run.
Final time for the day was 5:03... but that doesn't include transitions or rest stops. What I need to do but am too lazy to do right now is compare temps and average heart rates to last year to get some sort of comparison.
Of course, I don't really care. I'm actually very surprised that I was able to come anywhere near last year's time, with or without more heart rate/effort. Slowly building confidence.
As Kelly said on the facebooks, I'm getting my mo-joe back... get it! That's awesome because I've never heard that but I love it! I think a t-shirt is in order!
My first long wednesday run in a while. Up at 4:30am. Running on the Comet a little after 5. Very dark. No heart rate monitor because the battery is dead. But I had gps. Temp was perfect.
Little flashing light. Not a firefly. More exact tempo. What else flashes like that? A cell phone indicator light. They're coming to get me! Until I saw the second such bug a mile later. Runaway mental process.
Got a lot of good work thinking done. Workout work thinking is always good for framing the work ahead. Giving it perspective. With all of my recent worrying about my heart exploding and my lungs collapsing I've missed out on the workout thinking. It's nice to get back to it and now I have a good framework for the week ahead.
One of the key things workout work thinking does is elevate me above the day to day details. This makes it easier to see progress that's being made. I've been very frustrated with slow progress these last five or ten days. But progress has been happening.
I went out a little harder than normal, enjoying the fact that my heart rate wouldn't be logged. Then I came back a little harder than I should have. I half expected to explode in the last few miles but I hung on. Faded, to be sure, but hung on.
Average pace of 8:44/mi for the run. Total time of 3:20. Faster than most of my in-season long runs last year. But I was fresh today... no residual fatigue hidden in these legs right now.
IT bands didn't hurt much. Surprised and delighted by this.
Sleepwalked through the swim and weights. Odd because I popped awake at 4:57am and felt alert and ready to roll. Somewhere between there and the pool I lost the momentum. Got to sleep last night at around 11 which makes for about six hours of sleep... maybe I need a little more... but who has the time for that?
Didn't do much on the swim. 5x100y at 1:30-1:35 on lots of rest. A bunch of junk laps. But that's where I'm at. Just need to get my sea arms back. They're muscley. Then off to the floor for some core and back work.
Uninspired but I feel a lot better for having done it. As I mentioned yesterday, I feel strongly that I need to get into a daily morning swim workout routine.
Coyote in the Back Yard