So far so good! This morning I woke up at 4:30am and feel energized as the sun was yet again shining. It is funny how the weather can affect one's mood and energy levels (meaning Calgarians are bi-polars?). Last week was a draining week mentally. Since settling into the new home and having several gloriously warm and sunny days, it felt like an apocalypse moved into Calgary and decided to stay. Simply stated I was drained of physical and mental energy. I found it hard to get out of bed and my workouts became sporadic as I was simply not prepared to sit on the trainer again. I found myself shuffling workouts and pleading with Mother Nature to blow the rainy clouds to Saskatchewan as they need the rain and not the winds that are drying out the fields. After spending Saturday at my daughter's 10th birthday party in a bowling alley with a pack of girls I was prepared to move somewhere where the sun shines more frequently. So I mentally got psyched up to ride outside on Sunday morning as the weather reports showed a break in the showers. In a nutshell it was a cool and slightly uncomfortable ride but in the end it was a welcome 2.5hours of riding. I kept telling myself this is what makes you stronger, tougher, harder - like the Euro dudes.
I am lucky that I live in an area of town that offers up wicked terrain outside my door. On the days that the weather looks suspect or I need to stay closer to home, I have multiple short loops I can ride on with hills, changing wind patterns, flats, descents and generally little traffic. What made the Sunday rain ride enjoyable was exploring the little side roads and new development areas within Bears Paw. These are roads I have ridden by numerous times but never once thought to turn onto and ride. Definately a nice diversion and I now have several more low traffic areas that I can do various training sessions on. So a tip if I can give everyone is to ride the unknown on your recovery days as you never know what you may discover.
Monday evening was an interesting training session in that I was forced to ride inside doing MAP/VO2max intervals - my current flavour is either 5x 4min @ 360-400W + 5min easy spinning or 4x 5min @ 360-400W + 10min easy spinning. During the warm-up I felt sluggish and thought of going home. To make matters worse I didn't have my iPod - so no motivating tunes. I took a few minutes to relax and collect my thoughts and then to focus on what I needed to achieve in the workout to get faster. Once I had it mentaly set that I needed to complete 5x 4min between 360-400W with 5min easy spinning between each interval, I was ready to go. I lost all perspective of what was happening around me - a mental challenge for many is to not be distracted by the Ripped or Hot Body Bootie Classes that happen in Gym 1 at Talisman Centre. After the frist interval set I was having fun and plotting changes in the variables for each subsequent interval - for example rather than riding at my usual self-selected cadence I focused on riding at >105rpm for the same power output - legs felt a bit on the edge of comfort in terms of leg speed but the tension was far less and I could feel my cardiovascular system straining more. For the final interval I chose to ride a heavier gear to induce more muscular tension and get the feelings i the legs that occur late in the races - jello-like legs. My 30min of E2 riding was great - fully of energy and in fact my power was higher than during the warm-up as it seemed I woke up or more technically speaking "primed" many more muscles fibers during the intervals that they wanted to continue "playing" afterwards.
Tuesday evening I joined my teammates for the Moose Mt. fire road climb - check out the elevation gain on this sucker.
As I stated to the team earlier that day "I felt good" and was looking forward to a hard ride. It started off with fighting through traffic and developing a harsh voice. Needless to say I was late like P-ro and spoke briefly to Jeff before he took off up the road. I hurried to change into my riding gear, put together my bike, set my Garmin, tools, tube, pump, extra jacket... I got 20seconds of warm-up and then hit it up the road. I had no idea how longer the road was, how steep, where landmarks were and saw no one in sight. 34:20m:s later and it was done and I was headed back down to the parking lot to catch up with everyone. I was elated that I felt great afterwards - the Optygen is finally kicking in my system!
The next positive happened last night as I joined the Talisman Centre Triathlon Club's Brick training session. We rode on the stationary trainers outside in the sunshine overlooking the Elbow River with a slight breeze to keep us partially cool. Jon pushed us hard and many of us are still trying to figure out how to "keep the lactate from building in the legs" despite riding at functional threshold power and above! It was fun being an athlete versus coach in a session as I was out of my comfort zone - I was not in control of the times, interval sets, change-ups etc. Jon we need to chat about your timing as your 15seconds is a loooong 15seconds - by my accounting 15-30seconds too long! I decided to give running a try and was stoked that I could actually run off the bike! Not fast mind you but it felt fast until I watched Ashley Myers "sprint" around Lindsay Park - what an engine! I had very little Achilles trouble but still felt "strange" to be moving in such a manner. I the end I found myself really pushing hard on the run and felt alive again. Thanks Jon for the encouragement!
So overall it has been a great week of activity for me. The sun is back and with it renewed energy and vigor, more tanning opportunities, I seem to be able to run again and the weekend weather looks great for 8 hours of mountain biking at C.O.P. on Sunday.
Have a great weekend!
JVD
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