Week of Pain Concluded

After seven weeks of semi-sloth, I made it through my "Week of Pain" more or less unscathed. I still would not classify myself at either happy nor zen, but least my fog of depression seems to have transitioned into a kind of functional irritability. Still pushing forward towards the happy and Zen.

I have been a very busy girl lately, which would explain my lack of blogging. Most of my at-work time last week was spent interviewing candidates for a couple of temporary summer employees that we will be hiring. It's very exciting getting to choose and train my own team members for the first time, but also very exhausting trying to find the right ones.

Over the last couple of years, I have compared my search fulfilling and profitable employment to dating. Well, as the search for love goes both ways, so does the search for employment. So at this time, I'm no longer playing the role of rejected lover, but more of the casual online dater. I've found a couple of good candidates, but no true love yet.

Outside of work has been pretty much sucked up by the usual functions of training, eating (and cooking), sleeping, and trying to sneak in a few minutes of quality time with my husband. Between those things, miscellaneous errands, and my pursuit of Happy-Zeness, I've had very little time for blogging or mass media. In general, that's probably a good thing, as long as I don't freak out from deprivation of movies, pajamas, and junk food, the things that I have heretofore relied on for comfort.

The training has gone surprisingly well. After the rain-soaked TT intervals, the floods continued for another day, only with a 15-degree temperature drop. So Wednesday was supposed to be a 90-minute recover spin, but for some dumb reason I decided since it was recovery I could somehow make though watching a movie on the trainer. I really should have just bundled up and ridden outside because the trainer ride lasted all of 25 minutes. In fairness to myself, riding the trainer was hurting my knee and it was logical that I wasn't really doing a very good recovery ride if what I was doing hurt.

Thursday was yet another "real workout", although it was pretty informal. I was assigned to two hours of short and long hills. I was supposed to stand and attack on short hills and climb the longer ones in the saddle. No real instructions beyond that, other that I should accumulate at least 10% of my saddle time in Zone 4-5 by the time I was done. It was hard, but fun, since I got to choose my own recoveries and attacking short hills was a nice change since I rarely do any climbing out of the saddle. I ended up with 25% Zone 4-5 time, as well as meeting my personal goal of accumulating least 5 minutes in Zone 5.

Friday was an easy day on the rail-to-trail and Saturday was a 2.5 hour formal hill workout (Coach Dave loves to pile on the hill work in the pre-season). It went well, despite being in the 30's and getting pelted with sleet for a bit in the middle. I did have a tailwind on both hills though, so that was nice.

Yesterday was supposed to be a long dirt ride, but much of the route was flooded and I couldn't get my heart rate out of the 140's anyway, so I cut it to 90 minutes. I ended up with about 9 hours for the week, which seems like about two day's worth for everyone else, but it's good for me.

I try really hard not to get hung up on hour totals, as my training plan is lot more concentrated than that of the average cyclist. I'm pretty sure that if I can ever consistently work up to 15 hours a week of Coach Dave training I'll be pretty flippin' fast. The my biggest Coach Dave week so far has been around 11 hours and it was the week immediately preceding my two-month breakdown. Take from that what you will.

So my "Week of Pain" is done and this week's schedule is similar, but maybe a little more kind. At least it won't have the shock factor that last week did. Tuesday and Saturday are more hill reps on the mountain bike and Thursday is supposed to be two hours of moderate-effort technical work on the mountain bike. I have serious doubts about whether that will be possible. We will need at least 3-4 days of no rain and no sub-freezing temperatures for the trails to be rideable and the forecast isn't looking good. I suppose I'll figure something out.