Moving Along

I didn’t post on Monday because a) I was bummed out after my weekly phone call with my mom because being exceptionally chilly towards any attempts I make to tell her about our wedding plans as they unfold. I don’t fully understand this, but I haven’t asked for further explanation because we’re unlikely to change our plans based on it. I think that basically the problem is that the timeline that is right for her is not what is right for us, and being all grown-uppy this time around, it is very important to me that this marriage is neither rushed nor pressured and gets the proper level of celebration that it deserves. b) My shoulder was in excruciating pain due to a sudden uptick in MTB volume, a quick trip to Florida, and maybe from a crash that I had last week. c) I had nothing exciting nor witty to say.

I almost let myself off the hook on the whole weekly blog post thing, but I’ve decided to ahead with it. Besides, I took yesterday off from work to recover from the lingering project stress and the work conference in Orlando that I had to attend Wednesday-Friday of last week, so today feels like a Monday. Wednesdays off are the best, because it breaks the workweek into two very manageable two-day segments and it allows for a big mid-week ride with time to recover between weekends.

It’s a bit ironic that my goal of weekly posts is to find improvement in the past week, and for the last two weeks improvement has been incredibly easy to find. They’re come so easy that it’s hard to find anything interesting to say about them.

Sometimes a big breakthough is finishing up Tussey Ridge and realizing that you have the unexpected energy to do John Wert, too.

It’s been 3.5 weeks since I got back on the bike to find that my sitbone was still hurting despite having taken two-weeks off. However, I’ve discovered that on my plan of riding as much as I can stand and twice-daily icing, it’s actually improved more than it did on complete rest. Yesterday I completed a difficult and rocky 3+ hour mountain bike on it and the pain was at about 20% of what it was a month ago.

With work stuff, wedding stuff, and being out of town last week, I haven’t achieved the kind of metronomicly perfect consistent training I would like. I have, however, been ramping up better/longer/faster rides on the days I am able to ride, and I’ve been smashing Strava PR’s left and right. So I’m actually pretty proud of how my riding is going, but I also feel a little silly bragging about Strava PR’s. That is where I’m at, though. I’m improving quickly, but I’m still a long way off from feeling confident enough to pursue any real race goals prior to cyclocross. I’m okay with that, though, as it will save me money, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I’ve always been in such a rush to race that I never gave myself time to actually get fast first. Maybe this summer will that time for me.

This should have been in last week's post, but my official I-9 engagement wheels arrived a couple of weeks ago. Even with file-tread tires, they make my TCX a lot snappier (and prettier), so they probably deserve credit for some of the Strava PR's.