Rode Hard

Wet Dirty Cycling Clothes

The phrase "rode hard and put up wet" definitely comes to mind after this weekend's workouts, although I'm not particularly a fan of that phrase. It sounds like it means something dirty, even though I learned enough in my horse-crazy youth to know that it is not dirty at all. Basically, if you put a sweaty, overexerted horse in its stall before walking it around to cool down and possibly putting a blanket on it, it will get sick (read Black Beauty), much like what would happen to me if I sat in my sweat-soaked cycling clothes longer than than the time it takes to drink my chocolate milk and download my power file. Luckily, there are things called hot showers. I guess the reason that the phrase comes to mind is that I've just completed two longish days (3.5 hours each) where I rode to exhaustion and ended up soaked in sweat, despite upper 60's/ lower 70's temperatures.

Yesterday included part three of a four-part build-up of Vo2 Max intervals that Jason has me doing this month. I started with 2 x (2 x 2 min.) a couple of weeks ago, followed by 3 minutes last week, and then 4-minuters on Saturday. I finally cracked and fell short of averaging 200 watts for the set, but not by much. It sure was painful, though.

After that, I still had over two hours of endurance riding to complete and Emily joined me for that portion, since she become a Bloomingtonian last week. It was fun seeing her and catching up, but we got so busy chit-chatting that I forgot to eat or drink. To be exact, I consumed about 12 oz. of water and zero calories during the 3.5 hour ride. That wasn't really the best idea, since I'd exerted myself so much early in the ride. By the time I got home, I was cold, shaky, and starving, although I hadn't really noticed myself feeling bad until we were already back in town.

Despite a hard day yesterday, I was able to pry myself from pajamas and my Sookie Stackhouse novel for another 3.5 hours of Zone 2 today. For most of the summer, my Sunday Zone 2 rides tend to regress into "sit on the bike and soft pedal for the assigned amount of time" because that's all I can muster by the end of the training week. However, I know this isn't maximizing my training, so I've been trying to put in better efforts on my Zone 2 rides lately. Today I forced my tired to legs to turn hard enough to keep my heart rate in the 160's (I prefer HR over power on long rides), but I definitely felt wasted again by the time I got home.

This is the first time that I've felt truly tired since before the Lumberjack, although I've dealt with a lot of mental fatigue and sleep deprivation since then. I definitely prefer the deep physical tiredness that I'm feeling now, especially now that I've had a hot shower and some dinner.