WEEKS 7 & 8 AND AN UNWELCOME SUPRISE

Two more weeks of training have come and gone. Weeks 7 & 8 ended with the following totals....2:20 hrs strength training, 6:15 hrs swimming, 7:40 hrs biking and 6:45 hrs running.  All this fun averaged out to about 11 hrs per week.  Still manageable. Swimming continues to be frustrating.  I am actually putting in about an hr or so more time at the pool than my plan calls for.  The swim coach I am working with has cancelled practice the past three weeks which has left me floundering (pun intended).  Then there was one morning that the lifeguard was 30 freakin minutes late which really sucks because I have to be out of the pool by 6am or shortly thereafter in order to get to work on time.  That left me with a whopping 30 mins to swim that day.   Hopefully we will be back on schedule with coaching and I will see some improvements.  I am also going to take private lessons (again).  Keep your fingers crossed.  Biking included a

Guess which lane I belong in!!!

Computrainer ride.  This is like a pimped out bike trainer.  The class is held in a garage

I am in the back right of this pic.

with a large TV suspended from the ceiling which shows the course you are riding.  This one just happened to be one of the Tour de France climbs.  You can actually watch the scenery as you are pedaling.  I usually don't see too much as my head is down while I am praying for the course to flatten out so I can finally ride BELOW my damn threshold for a few minutes.  The cool thing about these rides is that the computer automatically adjusts the resistance on your bike so you are putting in the correct effort.  The bad thing about these rides is ...see the previous sentence.  You can't fake these rides.  If you are supposed to be riding at 110% of your threshold then that is what you have to do.  I enjoy them overall and wish they weren't held an hour's drive from my house.  Thankfully I can inflict the same pain on myself in the privacy of my own home as I did today on my 2hr 30 min trainer ride.  First off...that is an eternity.  I swear the clock said 6:30AM when I started and by the time I finished 2 1/2 hrs later it was 9PM.  Well...that's what it felt like anyhow.  The ride featured a rather ugly 20 min as hard as you can go and maintain interval.  Now you know this will be ugly when your coach tells you it is ok to get off the bike after this interval for a few minutes before resuming the rest of the ride.  That means don't puke on your bike!!!  Yep it was ugly BUT I didn't get off the bike...so there. Thankfully only one of my runs the past two weeks required some serious effort.  It was an hr and 30 min run that included a 1/2 mile all out effort followed by a 5 min recovery jog followed by a 2 mile all out effort.  OUCH.  Did I mention how much I hate to run fast??!!.  OK..now with all of that training business out of the way let's take a bit of a walk in my head.  Something totally unexpected happened to me this week that I did not see coming and did not like.  It was brought on by something so simple.  I signed up for a Century Ride this week to be held in May.  It is a great opportunity to get a long training ride in with all the pre-planning and logistics handled by someone else.  The route, waterstops, food stops and bathrooms are all taken care of for me.  However while I was typing in my info to register I felt very apprehensive all of the sudden.  Then all of these images poured into my head that chronicled what I do remember about my last attempt at a Century Ride.  I got these vivid memories of arriving at the race, checking in, pumping my tires, gathering my friends, meeting a woman who asked to ride with us, beginning the ride and getting lost.  Of course you all know that is pretty much where my memories end.  These thoughts made me physically sick to my stomach and almost stopped me from continuing to type.  Something about the term Century Ride triggered some very unpleasant thoughts that I was unprepared for and that made me mad....very very mad.  I guess I was dumb enough to think that since I have no memory of the accident itself that once the physical pain subsided that was it.  Incident over, case closed.  Guess I was wrong.  Guess I will have some issues with that accident for awhile.  WHAT FREAKIN EVER!!!  It pisses me off.  You know what though....I kept on typing, I registered, and I am doing the damn ride.  I just might have to refer to it as something else though......4 Quarters ride anyone??!!!!