What do you do when it all comes crashing down?
Strange though it may seem... last Friday seemed inexorably to have shifted the momentum of my seemingly newly encouraging quest for fitness. I felt like crap on Saturday, I felt like crap on Sunday... what do you do when it all comes crashing down? For no apparent reason? I didn't feel tired really any day last week, in fact I felt fantastic, like for the first time, I was in control of my training, and on an upward trajectory... hmmmm... I suppose this merits further investigation. For the mean time, I'll have to plan for a down week and see if it passes.
On another note, I've made the startling and highly consterning discovery that I am, after all... allergic to flour. GAH. Apparently flour is NOT entirely a wheat product, but enriched with a significant amount of barley, which is a no-no for me. Consequently, I am allergic to a significant portion of commercially available breads and baked goods, as well as anything of my own creation. This, I admit is a significant set back to the endurance athlete. Bread is basically a staple of my diet... and I'm not always thrilled with the types of breads that are wheat-only, and await with a small amount of horror, the damage inflicted upon my favorite recipes by "whole wheat flour" ... oh, woe is me :'(
Sunday 07/29: 41.7 miles, 2:39:30 ride time, 15.6 mph average. Felt moderately less bad compared to yesterday, but still, something just isn't right. Had to take is super super chill due to a strange "pulled" feeling in the left hamstring. Decided against a longer ride for this reason also, and instead productively opted to finish HP7 such that I can move on with my life. For the record, my favorite character is Snape. I think he's more interesting than Harry.
Monday 07/30: An overabundance of work and other things that need doing... Took a quasi-planned off day. Its going to be really hard to squeeze in enough riding time this week. I guess its good its a quasi-planned down week... Since my cycling woes seemed to have started after a rest day, perhaps another rest day is in order to change it back to previous state.
Tuesday 07/31: 26.3 miles, 16.6 mph avg, you do the math... I've forgotten how long the ride time was, but basically 6 laps around the RB, kinda crunched for time. Feeling better performance wise, but still something's a bit off... also feeling poorly outside of exercise, not enough sleep, way too many slides, way too much stress.
Wednesday 08/01 - Friday 08/03: Off, too busy, no sleep. Plenty of allergies. 3 straight days off is NOT exactly what I had in mind for the "down week"... but I suppose this will have to do.
Saturday 08/04: 57.7 miles, 3:58:30 ride time, 14.5 mph average. ~10 miles or so up the 39, past East Fork but didn't make it to the start of the crystal lakes climb. Longest ride, both timewise and distance wise in a really, really long time. Didn't recall that there was a lot of climbing on this section, but seemed to struggle quite a bit. Fine as soon as I got back to the flats, but probably over-extended myself a bit, noting the slow average speed. Also, VERY VERY WINDY. Felt in mortal peril of being blown into traffic or off of the side of the mountain for the greater part of 15 miles... have you ever had the experience of pedaling furiously into a downhill and going 11 mph? Scary.
In honor of KB, let me make a list of huge things that I saw on this adventure:
1 live bear (brown, eating garbage at the side of the street. super cute, but was scared it would eat me next, tried to increase speed as I went on by)
2 fist-sized tarantulas (black, hairy, crawling slowly across the road, surprised there weren't any squished ones...)
1 large dead owl (sad...)
Week Totals: 125.7 miles of riding, ~8:30 ride time, the issue here is that this mileage was in 3 rides, which is kind of a sub-optimal off week, especially given a taxing ride on Saturday. Oh, well, training is going to be rather inconsistent for the next month or so due to overabundance of work.
2 comments:
Maybe you should try the white whole-wheat flour that's at Trader Joe's. Maybe it doesn't have barley in it but won't be too different from regular flour. Anyways, I like it. Also, you should see if you're allergic to spelt flour. It's pretty good too, but made from different stuff than regular flour (it's a separate species from oats and wheat). But then again, you have to be a pretty hardcore hippie to buy spelt flour.
How was the rest of your week... update update update!
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