Ouch! I finally depleted my fitness or GGP 07
Cycling is so chaotic, in so many ways. You train like a madman, and you feel great and you do great for a while. Then you hit a slump and you refuse to believe you are over-trained so you train harder. Which leads to a dowardspiral of sucking. Then you are forced to take a vacation and you don't do shit for a whole week, well nothing bike related. You sooth your soul with good food and booze. Then you come back and you have an incredible race.
Now a different but equally chaotic pattern develops...no enough time to train and to much recovery. You think to yourself, "my legs will surely atrophy," but you have another good race and then you trick yourself into thinking maybe I don't need to train as much as I thought.
So another week goes by and now you are stuffing yourself with turkey, pie, beer and really anything you can get your hands on. You haven't done any exercise and quite honestly it feels purty good ;-) But your wasteline is expanding and so part of you can't wait to get back on the bike. Although throwing training to the wind and staying up late watching a movie, then TV, all the while driniking beers is hard to contend with ;-)
To add insult to injury, you come home from the Turkey day holidays and your bike is half way disassembled. You tried to start the shimano to SRAM conversion a few weeks ago, but work and the holidays got in the way. So now you are motivated at 12am, your going the distance and not really for speed, but you'll be damned if you don't get the bike together in your time of need.
You finish it and things are good, new bar tape, new shifters, new brake cable stradles to make the braking better, purty much a recipe for disaster ;-) 730am comes around way to early ;-( I grumble, roll over and then pop out of bed. If I can get some coffee going and Meredith out the door in time for her race I'll count that as my first small success for the day. And she's off.
Next up, retreiving mom's car from wherever the hell I parked it 5 days ago. OK, OK tryptophan haze wearing off, oh yes, now I remember where it is.... It was nice to sit and chat with mom, over coffee and toast, before heading off to the race. As I'm getting ready to roll I get a text for help from my team mate Megan, she's lile "we've got not feeders!" I text back, I'm on my way and the world felt like a better place because I felt like a contributing team member.
Speaking of heading off to the race...it was really cool to ride there from home. Last year I was making the trek across from the east bay, but now i'm a City mouse and it felt really cool to be able to ride to the local venue ;-) God I love the Citay!
So I roll into GGP in time to see the women's C race coming around for their 2nd, maybe 3rd lap. I relieve JK of his feeding duties and take over feeding the A40 ladies: Courtney, Megan and MO. MO and Meg aren't looking to excited about racing, but they knew that going in and had a good time anyway. Courtney, I could see struggling, but I could also see the eye of the tiger behind the pain. She went on to finish 3rd with a decent gap on the points leader, Dana, but behind Marrisa, second in the point series.
So to my race. Let's just say that missing the start was just the beginning of the disaster for me that day. Jeremy is telling Lander and I that our race is about to start, being that we're all a bunch of jokers I can't tell if he's messing with us or not. We're like no, he's like ya "go take a look". Sure enough the entire field is lined up about 100yds away. I frantically throw helmet and gloves on while one of my teammates released my bike from the trainer. I begin to run towards the start area, but a large mass of men is charging my directions. I slip behind the passage way near the start finish and wait for the field to go by and the tuck in behind. Holy crap my HR is pegged now.
We go into the first turn off the pavement and into the sandpits and we're bunched up in no time. I quickly dismount and scramble around a few peeps. And the rest as they say is history or rather I was history. Chased the whole time, hurt a lot, enjoyed beers afterwards. Thanks to Murphy for the Speakeasy Prohibition Ale and Big Daddy IPA
My pain profile or "the way to succeed and the way to suck eggs"
Now a different but equally chaotic pattern develops...no enough time to train and to much recovery. You think to yourself, "my legs will surely atrophy," but you have another good race and then you trick yourself into thinking maybe I don't need to train as much as I thought.
So another week goes by and now you are stuffing yourself with turkey, pie, beer and really anything you can get your hands on. You haven't done any exercise and quite honestly it feels purty good ;-) But your wasteline is expanding and so part of you can't wait to get back on the bike. Although throwing training to the wind and staying up late watching a movie, then TV, all the while driniking beers is hard to contend with ;-)
To add insult to injury, you come home from the Turkey day holidays and your bike is half way disassembled. You tried to start the shimano to SRAM conversion a few weeks ago, but work and the holidays got in the way. So now you are motivated at 12am, your going the distance and not really for speed, but you'll be damned if you don't get the bike together in your time of need.
You finish it and things are good, new bar tape, new shifters, new brake cable stradles to make the braking better, purty much a recipe for disaster ;-) 730am comes around way to early ;-( I grumble, roll over and then pop out of bed. If I can get some coffee going and Meredith out the door in time for her race I'll count that as my first small success for the day. And she's off.
Next up, retreiving mom's car from wherever the hell I parked it 5 days ago. OK, OK tryptophan haze wearing off, oh yes, now I remember where it is.... It was nice to sit and chat with mom, over coffee and toast, before heading off to the race. As I'm getting ready to roll I get a text for help from my team mate Megan, she's lile "we've got not feeders!" I text back, I'm on my way and the world felt like a better place because I felt like a contributing team member.
Speaking of heading off to the race...it was really cool to ride there from home. Last year I was making the trek across from the east bay, but now i'm a City mouse and it felt really cool to be able to ride to the local venue ;-) God I love the Citay!
So I roll into GGP in time to see the women's C race coming around for their 2nd, maybe 3rd lap. I relieve JK of his feeding duties and take over feeding the A40 ladies: Courtney, Megan and MO. MO and Meg aren't looking to excited about racing, but they knew that going in and had a good time anyway. Courtney, I could see struggling, but I could also see the eye of the tiger behind the pain. She went on to finish 3rd with a decent gap on the points leader, Dana, but behind Marrisa, second in the point series.
So to my race. Let's just say that missing the start was just the beginning of the disaster for me that day. Jeremy is telling Lander and I that our race is about to start, being that we're all a bunch of jokers I can't tell if he's messing with us or not. We're like no, he's like ya "go take a look". Sure enough the entire field is lined up about 100yds away. I frantically throw helmet and gloves on while one of my teammates released my bike from the trainer. I begin to run towards the start area, but a large mass of men is charging my directions. I slip behind the passage way near the start finish and wait for the field to go by and the tuck in behind. Holy crap my HR is pegged now.
We go into the first turn off the pavement and into the sandpits and we're bunched up in no time. I quickly dismount and scramble around a few peeps. And the rest as they say is history or rather I was history. Chased the whole time, hurt a lot, enjoyed beers afterwards. Thanks to Murphy for the Speakeasy Prohibition Ale and Big Daddy IPA
My pain profile or "the way to succeed and the way to suck eggs"
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