The Lumberjack in Pictures

Adam showing off on Friday.

Our cabin. Not so scary.

All smiles on the way to the start.

Why is my heart rate 180, already?

Eight miles in.

Calling it a day.

This one still kinda makes me want to cry...

Just Pedal

Okay, okay, you may be wondering how I am two days away from my first 100-mile mountain and NOT freaking out. I should be freaking out, right? Well, maybe not if I'd trained perfectly all winter and spring like a good little girl, but I think if that were the case I would be freaking out due to delusions of grandeur right now (trying to get the hole shot on Chris Eatough or something). Luckily, right now my delusions of grandeur are limited to, "Maybe I'll pull off a coup and beat like two people."

So what AM I thinking regarding the Lumberjack? Just pedal. That's my race plan.

At the Ouachita Challenge I was so many months removed from my last contact with either other racers or singletrack, that I got way too concerned about actually racing and blew myself up early. That won't be a problem on Saturday. I will line up in the back and when the gun fires I will pedal. Just pedal, drink water, and take a slurp off my flask of Perpetuem-based goop every 20-30 minutes. I refuse to give a crap about who is in front of or behind me until the finish line is in sight.

So that is why I'm not freaking out. I'm pretty sure that despite my sub-par training, I still have what it takes to finish if I pace myself. At least I won't have to hike-a-bike over a bunch of rocks this time (at least that's what I've been told). I do get a sick feeling in my stomach when I think that maybe I don't have the fitness to finish or that I won't make the time cutoff or that my pedal will fall off mid-race again, but what can I do?

Just pedal.

Let's Make A Deal

While I was waiting for the outcome of my recent job interview, I couldn't help but think of what I would do with the significant raise that would accompany my impending success (insert bitter pause here). Anyway, it was right after my "One Green Square" post and I made a deal with myself that if I got the job and could put 100 green squares together, I'd let myself buy a power meter. It was very motivating at the time and very un-motivating when the key part of the deal fell through. So I'm been re-negotiating with myself ever since.

The deal seemed to work, but I don't have the guaranteed future income to back it up, so I'm going over my options:

1) Insert a less-expensive, but also less useful object (like a Giro Atmos)

2) Suck it up and find a way to pay for the power meter (suck what up where?)

3) Focus my attention and dollars on racing more, since a bad day of racing beats a good day of training

4) Accept that I can't buy talent (or motivation) and couldn't afford it, even it were possible

So I'm putting it out there for YOU to decide (see the poll at right).

A Different Kind of Road Ride

This road took a ride instead of being part of one. What you're seeing is a ~2x4 foot slab the opposite side of the road washed onto the edge of the other lane.

Today marked the 13th mountain bike workout that I've had scheduled this season (not counting races) and the 8th that has either been straight up rained out or the trails have been way too muddy. I was supposed to help teach the beginner group at the Midwest Women's Moutain Bike Clinic today, but it was cancelled due to heavy thunderstorms and flash floods. The weather was okay in the afternoon, but I was relegated to the road once again.

Like An Ice Pack For The Soul

This was my workout tonight. Yeah, yeah, last hard workout before Lumberjack, etc. However, I came to the conclusion that emotional injuries should be treated like physical injuries: if I try to train through them then it will just exacerbate the problem. So I'm going apply rest and a "cold compress" and I'm fully confident that I'll be a better woman for it tomorrow.

The Great Flood

This was the view from my office window yesterday afternoon. I couldn't get a picture of the Mustang mostly submerged in the middle of the street. Luckily, I parked in a garage two blocks away, but a lot of my co-worker's cars were flooded.

~~

The storms didn't interfere with my training too much last night, since I was assigned one hour "so easy a 5-year-old could stay on my wheel". So that was easy enough to do on the trainer. Tonight is my "last hard workout before the Lumberjack", but it's just short max effort intervals, so more annoying than hard. Tuesday was supposed to be my last kick my-butt-and-make-me-cry workout, but the rain killed that. Now it's just cross my fingers time.

~~

So I just officially found out I didn't get the job. Luckily, I got through the bulk of the devastation over on Tuesday, when I just had a bad feeling. So other than a little, "What's a girl gotta do to get a freakin' break?" whining to myself, I'm already mostly over it. Three years of rejection have taught me a thing or two.

I already went and bought my "rejection lottery ticket", which I do everytime something crappy happens. I figure karma's got to work out somehow. My father-in-law and I had a debate last weekend regarding Powerball versus Hoosier Lottery. He likes to play "better" odds while I just go for the big money.

Dark Mood

This what the sky looked like at 2:30 this afternoon. The picture is actually brighter than it looked in real life. We've been pounded by thunderstorms and heavy rain all day, which has put an end to any hopes of doing 3 hour mountain bike workout tonight. Of course, it just got sunny a little while ago now that Coach Dave has sent me a crazy hard workout for the trainer instead.

Unfortunately, my mood has not been getting sunnier. I few days ago I mentioned that I was feeling too good, which basically meant I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I guess crappy weather ruins everyone's mood, but I'm feeling especially down today. I was supposed to hear something about the job I interviewed for a couple of weeks ago during the first week of June. I realize that the first week of June isn't even half over, but the sick-to-my-stomach nervousness kicked at 6:00 a.m. yesterday. Waiting is the hardest part.

So I kinda knew a few days ago I would be feeling really down again soon enough, but I was hoping I would find some answers on how to handle it before it did. Right now, I got nothin'. At least nothing within my control. I'm just going to try really hard to work through it without pushing myself too hard.

DINO #2: Brown County

Yesterday, I found my mountain bike mojo on the descent of the beginner loop at Brown County State Park. Two minutes later, my pedal came off. What's a girl to do?

What's wrong with this picture?

I woke up with a complete lack of desire to race my bike, probably due to the severe beating I was subjected to at Warsaw and how terrible I felt last Monday. I got up, got dressed, and soldiered on, only considering downgrading to sport for a few minutes in the registration line. Then I decided to woman up and take my rightful place as expert class pack filler.

I warmed up like I was supposed to and got my heart rate well above lactic threshold several times before the start of the race. However, climbing the very steep half-male paved climb to the singletrack during my warm-up about killed me, so I got even more nervous about the race.

When I rolled up to the starting line I saw that there was a record women's field with nine sport and six expert. Only during the 2005 AMBC race, when the Slingshot team, including MyHeroDanielleMusto, showed up was there ever a larger expert women's field in a DINO race. Sad? Yes. Things looking up? Let's hope so.

There was a last-minute announcement that the sport women were only doing one lap which solidified my decision to ride conservatively and let whatever would happen happen. When the gun went off the pack went into hare mode and I went into tortoise mode. It actually worked out well for me. I picked off a couple of people on the singletrack and things were going fine. I suffered on the big singletrack climb during the first lap and I thought I was going slow, but apparently I wasn't. I even passed another expert girl who had a flat tire and a couple of guys.

On the second lap, and expert guy lapped me, but since we were on a gentle, twisty descent, I decided to push myself and try to stay within site of him as long as I could. It worked. I was cornering the best I ever have in my life and I actually freaked myself out a little because I leaned so far into one turn, but stayed completely stable. Then my pedal came off and I couldn't get it back on, so I had to do a pathetic walk up the hill, coast down it back to the finish.

It's kind of weird, but I really wasn't that upset about it. I consider DINO races a measuring stick more than anything and when the results were posted, I could still tell I measured up pretty well. Extrapolating from who was directly behind and in front of me when the pedal broke, I was on track to go about 10-15 minutes faster than last year and was much closer to the other experts than last time. The best part was that I was getting stronger as the race went on instead of my usually mid-race blow-up. Either I'm a smart girl for finally warming up right or I'm actually on to something with this endurance racing thing (once I put in the training for it). Maybe both.

Bacon Chocolate

Yeah, I said it. Bacon chocolate. It's the most exciting thing I have to tell right now.

A couple of days ago, a co-worker came back from a vacation to Scotland and brought an assortment of shortbread and other buttery treats back with her. This lead to a discussion of the superiority of real butter and other "natural" fats in cooking and baking, which lead to the joking proposal of bacon grease based cookies.

It's a horrible idea, but it reminded me of a recent trip to the local international/organic/ health food market, which keeps a ridiculously large selection of chocolate from all over the world near the checkout (sneaky). I did a double-take when I saw what appeared to be piece of back on a chocolate bar. Sure enough, it was a bacon bar. I was initially repulsed, but the work conversation inspired me to purchase one and bring it in to share with my office-mates yesterday. It wasn't bad. It was sort of good. I ate what was left after everyone else had a piece. I probably won't buy one again.

~~

On the training front, I'm feeling too darn good. Not really. My legs still kind of feel like lead, but despite homework, work-work, and a fairly heavy training load so far this week, my stress and recovery scores are solid and I am maintaining a very good sense of well-being. My muscles are tired, but I don't feel bad. All of this is good, of course, but I'm trying to figure out how this week is different from my pre-crash living dead experience a couple of weeks ago or the deep fatigue and depression I dealt with all winter. I need to know so I can keep whatever's going on now going.

The only difference I can think of is the bacon bar. Just kidding.

However, I've really have been eating a lot this week and I'm wondering if it's helping. It's mostly been good quality food with the exception of the bacon bar and shortbread. I'm sticking to my snack schedule, having chocolate milk within minutes of getting off the bike, and actually eating dinner after I shower. Well, if you count stuffing some hummus and broccoli sprouts into a pita pocket dinner. It's got protein, fiber, carbs, and vegetables and requires chewing, so close enough.

It's usually so late when I get done training, so I just want to suck down some recovery drink and go to bed, but this week I've been eating real food at least. I'm getting a little less sleep because of it, but I'm feeling so much better right now I'm thinking it's worth it.

Mountain Bike Mojo

As the "cheeseburger kitties" would say, I doez not haz it.

Monday was my first time back on a mountain bike since the Warsaw race three weeks ago. It was also only about my sixth time on singletrack this season. The frequent and heavy rains have really been keeping me off the trails, as well as several breaks in training. So I am really having trouble finding my "mountain bike mojo" this season.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has experienced the "Oh my gosh, this is hard" sensation the first time your tires touch dirt after a long winter on the road. It seems to occur no matter how good of shape I think I am in from road riding and this year it seems like it's happened on all but one MTB ride, due to the long dry (or wet) spells in between.

Monday I went to Brown County and was supposed to do 3 X 20 minutes TT efforts, but I felt like complete crapola from the get go. It may be true that you don't really lose any fitness in a week off, but it can certainly make you feel cruddy in the first few days on the bike afterward. So I just rode "easy" for two hours. However, I racked up a lot of zone 3-4 time just training to make it up the climbs without shifting to my little ring. I just hope this phase wears off before Sunday's race, as I can't imagine trying to suffer through 2 laps of that at "hard" pace feeling the way I was a couple of days ago.

The good news is that I actually cornered and descended pretty decently. I really focused on my new mantra of "the thighs tell the bike where to go, not the hands". I'm trying to develop my counter-steering abilities.

Yesterday was a two hour easy ride on the road, so it was actually easy, more or less. It still made me tired, but I think I'll be fine. This afternoon is 5 X 3 minutes of Zone 4 in a 1:45 total ride on the road. It's looking like I'll actually hit double-digit hours this week for the first time in forever.

Crossing fingers.

Easy Hard Day

Today marked the third green square in a row since my unplanned break from training. It was also my first "hard" day. Luckily, it was an easy one: 7 X 12 second sprints on a 3-5% hill. It was the kind of workout that's actually just plain fun at the time, but I will probably feel tomorrow. Actually, I feel it already. Tomorrow is a scheduled day off, and while I feel a little bad taking off a perfectly good Sunday, I know it's for the best. I can't load the legs up too much too soon, as they are kind of in shock from the return to training. Besides, I can get ahead on my homework so that I won't stress about it on the days when I do have scheduled workouts over the next couple of weeks. I still have Monday left to ride and play.

~~

So here's a philosophical question for everyone, although there seems to be a lot more dog people than cat people among my blog friends, so I may get my butt kicked on this one. Today I was watching Sixx chase her tail, but unlike most dogs, she was actually catching it. (The key is to go through the back legs not around the side.) So tell me, does the fact that she can catch her tail make her smarter than a dog or does the fact that she can catch her tail, but still continues to chase it some more make her less smart?

One Green Square

I finally got back on the bike today. I did a short "inertia breaker" ride on Sunday, but today was my first day back at anything resembling training. I did a two hour ride in zone 2 with a 12-second superspin every 10 minutes.

Now I need to just keep doing that. Whenever I download a workout like I'm supposed to, Training Peaks puts a green square on my training calendar for that day. If I cut the workout short by more than 10 minutes, it's yellow. If I skip it altogether, it's red. Now I have one green square on my calendar for the week. My new goal for the season is to accumulate as many green squares as I can and I think the rest will take care of its self.

Brain Fried

Well, the interview is over and the thank yous are sent. Now all I have to do is wait (hopefully less than two weeks). Thanks to everyone who wished me good (even if it was just mentally). I've just been a little too brain fried until now to post anything.

For the record, the interview went okay. I've been joking that I did my normal nervous stuttering, but the content of what I stuttered was impeccable. That's not completely true, but I put a lot hard work and thought into my presentation and I think I came up with a heck of a sales pitch. I just wish I would have delivered it a little more smoothly. However, after being the interviewer so many times over the last couple of months, I have a strong feeling that I sounded worse to myself that I did to the people listening.

Then I spent the entire workday today in Indianapolis doing training and I am overcome with a deep exhaustion right now. I've been a little short on sleep the last couple of nights, but I think the real problem is that all the stress is just screwing up my brain chemistry and telling me I need to crash. I'm more relaxed than I have been for the last week, but I'm not fully where I should be.

I've almost got my whole class strategy figured out. It helps that I have a three-day weekend coming up. It's turning out to be much more work that I expected, but hopefully I can learn to manage class and training. I may just need to wean myself off my movie addiction for a while and figure out some new ways to keep myself calm.

As for training, there's not much to it right now. I got my training plan from now until the Lumberjack yesterday and it's reasonably kind. Apparently, I'm still tapering for it after all (from what I don't know). I'm going to just take it as an opportunity to get back on my feet and rebuild some my consistency. Since the plan is a little easier I'll hopefully be able to stick with it through the race. The Lumberjack is going to be yet another "learning experience" or "even more expensive group ride", but I'm pretty sure if I made it through the Ouachita Challenge I can make it through the Lumberjack.

Then I'll have 11 weeks until the Shenandoah, then all of cross season, and then, oh, the rest of my life to try and get fast. On days like today, I'm honestly way too tired to be anxious and the rest of my life seems soon enough. I might change my mind about that once I'm feeling good again...

Another Non-training Blog Entry

Today's weather was nice, but the ratchet of a career related stress that I have unnecessarily heaped upon myself keeps on turning.

Besides the homework I've been dealing with all week, I now I have a very important job interview on Tuesday. I have to give a presentation, but luckily it's of the powerpoint-on-random-topic variety. Basically, I just have to stand up and talk about myself, no powerpoint necessary. I think it's might actually be a good thing since I get to cover a lot of material before we go into the great of unknown of question and answer format. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much worthless in the days going into a big interview and all I can really do is hope I get the job and that it will be the last one for a while.

The second is goes back to earlier in the week. I already decided on Tuesday that I am completely lacking in an "business formal" attire that I actually feel good in. I think part of the problem is that I always buy suit jackets the same size as the pants and then they look big and sloppy. I'm a cyclist; I have top/bottom discrepancy.

I actually ordered a new suit a few days ago, but it will probably not be here in time. Even if it is I always have to have pants hemmed, because I'm solidly in between regular and petite length legs. So I had to come up with a way to make what I have acceptable. I spent a good portion of my time at the mall this morning, but couldn't find any of the items I was looking for. I think I have settled on just wearing a jacket and pants that both fit, but are not a set. Hopefully, the committee won't judge me too harshly.

It just frustrates me how hard it for women to find nice suits compared to men. I was once complaining to a male coworker who joked, "business casual is a scam invented by men to keep women from advancing professionally." He jokes, but it's true. Here's what mean were for work: pants, jacket, shirt, tie. If they want to be business casual, they take off the jacket and tie. They have special stores with racks and racks of these items and salespeople to show them how to match.

For women, there is so much more to it: pants, skirts, jackets, blouses, camisoles, all kinds of things men don't have to worry about. Wearing opened-toed shoes for men isn't even an option except in the most casual circumstances. For women, finding closed-toed dress shoes (at least stylish ones) this time of year is hard, but I have some very high ideals beaten into my head from my undergraduate business studies. One of those is no open-toed shoes at work and certainly not at a interview.

Seriously, why is there not a S&K women's wear? I just want to like the way I look.

I keep telling myself that from my all my experience as both an interviewer and interviewee the last couple of years, that probably very few people care about this stuff as much as I do. I probably hurting myself more by caring at this point, since it's stressing me out.

So all of this probably seems pretty lame coming from someone who usually blogs about training for cycling. I know should care a lot less about my job, what I wear to my job, and anything regarding my job when I'm not there. I try to tell myself that it's really all about paying for my cycling toys anyway, and when the pursuit of money for toys interferes with the enjoyment of the toys, it's time to back off. Easier said that done.

I've always been a very high achiever academically. I was not one of those kids that got rewarded for a straight-A report card. Mostly my parents had me so scared of what would happen if I didn't get straight-A's I never actually got a B until college. At that point, it was somehow acceptable and I took full advantage my first semester.

I was always the kid that wanted to hang out with adults rather than other kids, and from junior high on, they always thoughtI was the best thing ever. Then my academic career ended and I was an "adult" in the real world scratching to survive. Everything I'd accomplished prior to that point apparently meant nothing to the people that mattered. For the first time in my life, success didn't come easily and three years later I'm still trying to prove that I'm really what my transcripts and diplomas say I am.

I grew up as a kid who was good at school and bad at sports, so I desperately wanted to become good at sports. I spent so much time and effort on that I suddenly was bad at the life the good grades were supposed to prepare me for. So these days I spend a lot of time vacillating my focus from one to the other and being good at neither. I definitely need to work on my balance if I ever want to be successful.

Hey, at least I'm not trying to have musical and artistic talent, too, right?

My Training Needs Antipsychotic Medication

Yep, train my butt off, get physically exhausted, get depressed, find excuses to miss several days of training.

This week was rain and homework. Going "back to school" is harder than I thought. At least I know what I'm doing after this week and will be better prepared for the rest of the semester.

I've been avoiding the blog all week out of guilt, but I guess the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Sooooo...I have a problem.

And Wussing Out...

Okay, so I'm not really beating myself up about it too much, but I needed a title and my efforts over the past few days have been less-than-heroic.

Friday I skipped my squats because my legs were junk and I didn't really see the point in causing the significant muscle fiber trauma that I knew it would when there was definitely not enough rest scheduled in the near future for it to heal. Breaking down muscle only works when you let it grow back.

Saturday was my one "heroic" day of the weekend. My scheduled workout was 8-12 X a 6-8% grade hill that took 60-90 seconds to climb. The first part of the climb was supposed to be zone 3-4, then stand and push to zone 5 for the last 20 seconds, and finish with 5 powerful pedal strokes at the crest of the hill. This is a Coach Dave staple and as many times as I've done it, I've never made it through more than six reps. However, once I saw it smack-dab in the middle of a power block, I finally got it. It's not about the hill; it's about the sprint at the top of the hill.

My legs once again felt terrible going into the workout, but I decided to do one rep and then if I still wanted to quit I would. This time I made it a point just to climb the hill, not try to push too early like I have in the past (a steep grade will get me to zone 3 without training) . Sure enough, I had a much better workout this time and got 8 reps in. I might have been able to do more, but I didn't want to be greedy. I had made my point and I wanted to live to train another day.

Unfortunately, the next day I woke up to rain, high winds, and a temperature that topped off at 51 degrees. Great weather in February, not so much in May. I had two workout options for the day: a four hour mountain bike ride if I felt good or a two hour road ride if I didn't. Well, I didn't feel good and couldn't have mountain biked even if I did and it didn't take long for me to decide that I didn't really feel up to a road ride in the rain either. Adam had some sort of nasty flu thing last week and I'm still not fully convinced that it won't get me yet. I've had a low-grade sore throat since Friday, but nothing else so far.

The only problem with this plan is that Monday is ALWAYS my day off. I have a serious mental block against riding on Monday, but I somehow convinced myself yesterday that I would. Yeah right. I came home and stressed about what to wear to our office "retreat" tomorrow as I wanted to look nice for all the important folks in other departments.

Then I stressed about my first week of homework, because I just began the first class of a "graduate certificate" program in Instructional Systems Technology. I don't officially need any more education, but I'm definitely wanting to make a bit of a career change. Well, I've been wanting to do that for two years, but I'm finally getting a clear picture of what my strengths are. They include being a student loan guru/superstar, but unfortunately there's not a lot of room for advancement in that field (at least without moving), so I have to figure out a way transfer my skills to something more profitable.

So the ride got bumped for homework. That's not going to happen again, I swear.

The good news is that my legs should be good going in the next week. I'm going to keep pushing the limits about what I can handle and see what happens. I really wish I had a power meter, because I feel like my legs and HR monitor are lying to me about what I'm really capable of as far training volume and intensity go. Too bad that probably won't happen for a while on the current salary.

From what I hear, power meters and Shakira's hips are the only training devices that register fully accurate information.

(For some odd reason, we like making Shakira jokes in the Rodkey household.)

Pushing Through

After Tuesday's basement torture, I pushed further into my sprinty, power-building block of training. Unfortunately, Wednesday had thunderstorms all day and I was stuck inside on the trainer, which wasn't really that bad for sprints. I just cut the ride time from 1.5 hours to and even 1. I justified the reduction in time by telling myself the extra 30 minutes would have been eaten up by the ride in and out of town anyway, had I ridden outdoors.

Yesterday was a two-hour zone 1-2 ride. My legs were pretty wobbly from two days of sprints, but I set out to see what would happen. Thirty minutes into the ride, I was still struggling to keep my HR up to zone 2, so I thought about cutting it short. I have a belief, which my coach has confirmed, that riding much more than an hour is a waste of time when you can't get out of zone and you would be better off going home to rest.

However, I was really set on making through a hard training block as planned for once. I was hitting zone 2, but it was hard. I decided that since it was Thursday night and I was almost done with a relatively low-stress week at work, I was going to experiment and push a little further through the boundaries of fatigue than I normally do. Rest and recovery are all well and good, but I have to step up to "big girl" training someday. So I forced my legs to keep spinning strong, smooth circles fast enough to keep my HR above 154, even though they didn't want to. Finally, after the first hour I hit my stride and actually felt decent. My HR actually went a little crazy and started jumping up too high the last 15 minutes, but I was okay.

I woke up pretty worn out today and my legs definitely feel heavy, but it will take a few days to really see the results of my experiment. My workout today is 30 minutes of different types of one-legged squats. Since it's short, I can go home and watch a movie and chill for a while when I get home from work, so it's going to be a mental rest day even if I won't be getting full-on physical rest.

We'll see how it goes, I've still got a tough couple of weeks ahead of me and I'm really going to have to be vigilant lest I "break" under the pressure, but if I can make it through it will totally be worth it.

Puke

I'm going to refrain from lengthy commentary today, but I just wanted to say how hard my workout was yesterday. It was three sets of the following: 20 box jumps followed by 5 X 30 sprints on the trainer in my biggest gear. Yep, sprints are fun at 15 seconds, hard at 20 seconds, and apparently torturous at 30 seconds. My legs were jello afterwards, but I guess it's good for me.

Today is more sprinting, but these just babies: 10 seconds out of the saddle, then 10 seconds in the saddle every 5 minutes over the course of a 1.5 hour zone 2 ride. These are the fun kind.

~~

Just in case anyone was planning on trying to eat a whole mango at their desk at work while wearing freshly dry-cleaned clothes, don't. Stick with apples and bananas.

Don't ask me how I know this either.

Finding the Right Words

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time reading various responses to my weekend's race by blog comment and email. I also spent some time catching up on my blog-reading and reacting to other peoples' race reports from the weekend.

It's unfortunate that Hallmark doesn't make a "I'm sorry for your race" card, because it's really hard find the right thing to say in those situations. I don't want to you be a downer, but there's also the reality that, for the person involved, the only cure for a bad race is a good race (or good workout at least).

Of course, bad races aren't the only times I don't know what to say. There are also the cases where I want to say "Good job!", but a bunch of people have already said that and I can't think of anything new or cool. There's really of whole plethora of situations where I want to say something, but everything I can think of is trite and/or unoriginal.

So I have come up with the perfect blog comment, although I'm not sure if I'll ever use it: "So I read your blog and I care what's going on in your life. I hope that knowing this will make you feel good."

That's pretty much what I'm trying to say most of the time.

Day of Rest

Yesterday, I had a much needed "day of rest", which I learned is a lot different from a "rest day". Technically, I had three rest days last week (two planned, one unplanned), but I still went into the race Saturday feeling like the living dead. That's because it's the non-training stuff that's killing me. It seems that too often my "rest days" are just weekdays where I don't have to ride, so I just run around town like an insane woman doing errands after work. It's not very restful, even though I'm not training.

Yesterday, however, I did ride, but it was a lot closer to a real rest day than I've had in a long time. I slept 12 hours as planned. I then got up 11 and ate a leisurely breakfast while watching a movie. Then I ran a couple of errands with Adam and got ice cream. After I got home, I went on a 1:15 easy ride on the road, showered, and made a nice dinner. After all that I was still in bed before 10. I seriously need to do that more often.

Now today is a "rest day" per my schedule, but I'm still stuck running around after work. I really try to get everything I need to do done on the weekend, but it's hard when I'm racing or traveling as I was last weekend and this past Saturday. I did what I could yesterday, but a lot of businesses aren't open on Sunday. It makes me kind of glad I have four weeks until my next race.

DINO #1 Race Report (Race Rant?)

UGLY is the only way to describe my race today.

I headed to Warsaw, IN today to kick off the DINO series and start shaking out the answers to the questions and speculation that I mentioned yesterday. I can only hope that by June I am proven wrong because things aren't looking so hot right now.

It was the most painful start I've ever had as my throat and gums were burning so bad from lactic acid that I thought my lower jaw was going to fall off. I haven't traditionally warmed up well before XC races, but I did before the TT last week and I felt so much better than I did today. I think I need to make it part of the routine.

The leaders dropped me pretty quickly and I was left to suffer with a couple of sport riders lurking behind me. I kept myself completed redlined trying to hold them off, but during a series of power climbs near the end of the first lap, I blew up, crashed, and let them pass me. I completely couldn't get myself together after that and could barely keep my bike on the trail. I wanted to quit.

I decided to finish, but just ride the second lap "easy", which still hard after an hour with my HR sky high and expert men zooming by at that point. The sad thing is that I my "easy" second lap was less than 2 minutes slower than the first lap where I was killing myself.

I ended up with a time 17 minutes faster than last year, but my third place expert woman (I was fourth out of four) put a full 30 minutes on me. Additionally, I was beaten by several sport women including one that I consistantly beat by around 15 minutes every race last year. It was not good.

I'm sure part of the problem was how exhausted I've felt all week, which is bad because the fatigue is only about 30% from training. I'm definitely going to try to sleep at least 12 hours tonight and try not to do anything tomorrow except my 2 hour ride, which I will be doing VERY easy.

Power Trip

I got my training plan for the next three weeks from my coach a few days ago and it sort of makes me want to cry just looking at the workouts.

We decided that since the season is getting off to a late and funky start that it may be best to just start over and try to peak for the Shenandoah 100 at the end of August. The Lumberjack has been demoted from an "A" race to another "learning experience", which I suppose it's good to adopt that line of thinking ahead of time rather going in and blowing myself up over nothing.

As for the crying part, that because of the muscle-fiber shredding power workouts I'll be doing before then. The idea is that if you increase your maximum power that automatically makes you faster at all effort levels, as they are all percentages of your max. Doing this will involve doing a lot of sprints over the next few weeks.

Fifteen second sprints on the road bike are fun and I will be doing plenty of that, but I will also be doing sprints at the top of hill repeats, 30 second sprints on the trainer (it starts hurting at 20), and jumping onto boxes in between sprints on the trainer. Fun, eh?

Then endurance training gets mixed back in as I start to adapt. That's going to leave me short on long rides before the Lumberjack, but I think it's okay. My problem at the Ouachita Challenge was burning all my "matches" (power, fast twitch fibers, etc.) out early in the race. The new training plan should give me a few more matches to burn and hopefully I'll be smarter about how I use them for the Lumberjack. Then by the Shenandoah I will hopefully have lots more matches to burn, lots more efficiency at burning them, and the experience of knowing how to use them correctly. Oh, and hopefully I'll be better at riding over rocks.

So that's the long term for the season. In the short term, I feel very much like I did jostling around at the start of the Ouachita Challenge all over again, as the first DINO XC race is tomorrow. The season always starts with a wave of rumor and speculation and an inevitable post on the HMBA forum predicting the DINO Series top 10 expert men for the year. We women don't get that kind of publicity; for us it's more chatting amongst ourselves about who we will think will show up, what class they will be in, and how fast they'll be.

And then by June, we're always proven wrong. Kind of like worrying about getting "stuck behind the slow people on the singletrack", eh?

I'm still nervous nonetheless. It largely has to do with the thought of racing gut-wrenchingly hard for two hours and knowing I'll probably still get beaten by several people after all that suffering. But as my favorite line of this blog's namesake tune says, "You live for the fight when that's all that you've got."

The funny thing is that trying to focus on the long-term is what's making me nervous. Since I'm getting what feels like a really late start rolling into the season (I hit my lowest weight since Christmas this morning, but it's still around 7 pounds heavier than this time last year), I'm already worrying about stretching the season out as much as possible. I've already been looking for late-fall races, which is dumb because I have no idea how I'll feel in November. Yet I'm still formulately plans and backup plans for six months from now. It's a compulsion I can't seem to break.

You may have noticed that I have the Iceman Cometh as question mark on my sidebar schedule. Yes, I could have signed up for the lottery, but I wanted to a "win" a spot through the Midwest Mountain Bike Championships program. It was a good idea at the time, but after my crappy winter training I think I've just traded a lottery for a poker game. It's all gambling, and I'm letting myself get worried about too many things beyond my control.

I don't think I'll elaborate beyond that. If I'm in a poker game, I need to keep my cards close to my chest.

Long Time Gone

It's been three long weeks now,
Since Blowout Mountain blew me out,
But I'm gettin' it back on the dirt now,
But I'm takin' the long way 'round.

The last week and a half has been insanely busy with work craziness and getting back into training, so I'll try to be short 'n' sweet as I can on the catch-up.

Last week was essentially cycling rehab for me as I ditched my scheduled workouts and just tried to get back in the habit of getting on my bike ever day. Work was really stressful and just getting on the bike for an hour or so a day was about all I had in me.

Saturday I returned to formal training with 3 hours on singletrack at Brown County State Park with 4 X 3 minutes hill repeats thrown in the middle. It was hard and kind of clumsy at first, but it helped me get my dirt mojo back and allowed me to earn my first Big Ugly Black Bruise of the season:

I've been thinking that my blog needs more pictures, but as you can see, my camera phone quality isn't the best. You get the idea though.

Don't worry; it wasn't a bad crash. I just banged my leg on the handlebars after my bike came to an inadvertent stop trying to roll over a large root.

Sunday Chrysa and I went to the course for the coming weekend's XC race to pre-ride and there happened to be a dirt TT going on while we were there. They were paying well and there was only one other expert woman so I decided to enter. I was doing really well until about halfway through I blew a tire and managed to pinch a hole in my replacement tube trying to change it. Doh! I ended up walking the rest of the way back, but I got $40 for it, so I can't complain.

I'm getting pretty tired of going on long walks with my bike, but I supposed that when I finally make it to the La Ruta I will be the most experienced hike-a-biker there.

Finally, tonight was more hill reps on the mountain bike, but I opted to do them at our local mountain bike park which is within riding distance rather than go to Brown County. I already used way too much gas over the weekend and have a lot of driving to do on Saturday as well. The problem with having such a nice trail 30 minutes away (by car) is that the local trail is falling into sad disrepair. It's located next to some low-income housing and there seems to be a very high scary people to mountain biker ratio, so I don't really like going out there by myself anymore. Tonight was okay as it was a little cold; there were no hanger-outers to make me nervous.

So with that, I will leave you with one final low quality picture:

This is a very important purchase for mountain biking season: bandages that match my team kit! If you're going to beat the crap out of yourself, you might as well make it look cute, right?

Happy Cows and Tiger Eyes

Risin' up, back on the street,
Did my time, took my chances,
Went the distance now I'm back on my feet,
Just a girl and her will to survive...

I made it through my stomach pain, yet never got a diagnosis. Apparently my blood work indicated nothing more than minor inflammation (which could be anything) and any malady that would normally cause pain like that should have come with nausea and vomiting. Luckily, it went away on it's own, but really wish they would've found an explanation.

I did an easy hour ride today and should resume fully normal training by next week, but I will be missing the first cross country race of the season tomorrow. It's technically a "practice race" and doesn't count for points or prizes, but it's a fun course and it makes me sad to miss it. However, racing tomorrow sounds like a good way to relapse, which I absolutely don't want to do. So, just a couple of easy hours on the road for me.

During my couch confinement for the last week, I got pretty well caught up on my DVD watching, but more importantly I read an eye-opening article in Velonews. I generally don't pay much attention to the training articles, as I have a coach to tell me what to do, but the latest issue intrigued me. It had to do with Rick Crawford's CNS scoring, which I have been logging in for my coach for months, but didn't fully understand what I was doing.

CNS stands for Central Nervous System and the article was about measuring and balancing different types of stress and recovery in a more holistic way than just hard and easy days on the bike. More importantly, he used the analogy (and we're going to assume this is true and not just an annoying cheese ad campaign) that cows produce more/better milk when they are happy and cyclists produce more/better results when they are "happy".

So after two weeks of travel, work stress, and illness, the pursuit of happiness was heavily on my mind already. It turns out that Happy Zen Lindsay has the potential to be even faster than Angry Lindsay, and much more consistently, at that. Of course, I already knew that on an intuitive level or I wouldn't have been trying to focus on the mind/spirit aspect of my training for several weeks already. Unfortunately, it's a long confusing process and it's a little hard to come to a conclusion about what would make me truly "happy" now.

I actually visited our local "Zen community" last Sunday, which is convenient, since it's 1 1/2 blocks from my house. I'm still a little confused though. Basically, I think it comes down to that after some practice I should learn to neutralize my emotional state and learn to live in the moment. The practice should help me learn not to let my level of happiness hang on ever-changing circumstances that are beyond my control. We'll see.

More in tune with the article though, I started brainstorming on ways to make an immediate reduction in my stress scores, other than just lying to the computer program and myself as I apparently have been doing since I keep burning out before the numbers say I should. It also made me question if I'm really cut out for this if cycling doesn't intrinsically make me happy.

It's a weird question since I'll admit I'm not one of those girls who says, "I've just always liked riding my bike", because a lot of the time, I don't. However, I do LOVE racing bikes and training is just something you have to do in between. I hope that doesn't make me seem bitchy and overly competitive, because I really don't want to come off that way. I also don't want to come off like all my self-esteem is hanging on "who's ass I can kick" (although it never hurts the ego). Honestly, as cheesey as it is, my feelings can best be described as such:

It's the eye of the tiger,
It's the thrill of the fight,
Rising up to the challenge of a rival...

I really just like engaging with a competitor and really pushing myself. It's probably why I don't like just riding for training so much and why I like cycling so much better than I did triathlon. I probably would have felt the same way about running, but trying to go from a non-runner to Division I runner, I really never got good enough to race head-to-head with anyone much. I really wish I would have got to run at the high school or Division III level instead.

Anyway, I come to the conclusion that cycling does make me happy, more or less. I just need to find a way to keep the rest of my life from draining on me so much. Maybe that's where the meditation will come in. Until then I will leave you with another great quote not from the Rocky III soundtrack:

"....I realized that sometimes riding a bike is just plain not fun and too many people in the world are assholes (I've decided to stop being an asshole in order to decrease the numbers)."

-Tracy Nelson

Ummm, Barium...

First Mrs. Bigglesworth and now me. The mystery abdominal pain that slowed me down on my ride Saturday decided to stick around and get worse, so this morning I decided to see a doctor. So far, we don't have a clear diagnosis, but I do get to drink a couple of Barium "smoothies" and go back for a CT scan at 2:30. It's just goes to show that missing work isn't always fun.

Until then, I get to sit around and worry about what my diagnosis will be. I'm sort of worried it's my gall bladder and they're going to want to take it out and I won't be able to ride for another month or so. I guess it not a good idea to get too freaked out too early though. Hey, at least I should lose some weight from it, right?

Bike Race to Rat Race

I got back to Bloomington Wednesday night well-rested and ready to get back on my bike, as I had been bikeless since the end of the Ouachita Challenge. My bike rode home with my friend Chrysa on Monday and I flew home on Wednesday. Not really the best laid plans, but the brilliant travel plan that I had when I signed up back in December slowly fell apart as the race drew nearer. Oh well, you live, you learn. It was my first time "travel racing" as my husband would say.

Unfortunately, my anxiousness to start training again was completely killed my first day back at work. So much work had piled up while I was gone and I got stressed out to the point of feeling physically ill: headache, random body pains, dizziness, and nausea. That bled on into Friday and I ended up not riding until this morning.

Today's ride was my first official "mountain bike ride" of the season (last weekend was a beast all of it's own). I went to Brown County to try out my singletrack legs and found them quite lacking, even on less-techical terrain and with a non-exploding heart rate. I was riding very weak both fitness-wise and techincally. I've had stomach pains since breakfast this morning that didn't really subside for my ride, but I got the distinct feeling that I still wouldn't have exactly been a superstar otherwise.

I did get some good practice on the "fake rocks" today though. I pretty much rode out the most techical section and back to see if I'd gained any skills in last week's experience. Overall, I was actually pretty wussy, as I tend to be when I'm out of practice, but I did manage to clear the "S-shape rock garden" for the first time ever. It's considered to be one of the more difficult elements on that trail system, so that was an accomplishment.

I nine more weeks to get myself ready for the Lumberjack 100 and while podium places are probably out of reach, I would at least like to get through it with a little less pathetic suffering than Ouachita. Taking five-day breaks from riding are probably not the way to do that, but I'm going to try really hard to make sure that doesn't happen again, well, like ever... We'll see about that.

~~

In case anyone was wondering. I made the last-minute decision for Mrs. Biggleworth to have her surgery while I was out of town. I didn't want Adam to have to take care of her afterwards by himself, but the vet was leaving town the day I was getting back and I didn't want Mrs. B to have to wait two more weeks. I figured that given the choice, it was more important for the vet to be there for the surgery than me, so she had the operation while I was on my way to Arkansas.

It went really well and she's feeling much better. Now she just has a bald belly and a little strip of one front leg shaved (for the IV, I presume) that makes her look like she's wearing Uggs.

How the Other Half Lives

It took me a couple of days to find the motivation to write my race report for the Ouachita Challenge. Then this morning I saw that Carey had posted hers and I was quite surprised to find a few similarities between her race and mine:
1) It was the hardest LAST PLACE finish for me ever.
2) The start was way faster than I expected.
3) The course was way harder than I expected.
4) I was in no mood to listen to the guy giving me directions at the last check point. This was not because I was worried about holding anyone off, but because I too believed that it was all down hill to the finish and I just wanted to be done.

This, however, is not the "other half" I am referring to. I am referring to the other half (okay 95%) of the United States that is not Indiana and how I had no idea what I was getting into when I rolled up to the starting line Sunday morning. I apparently picked a very bad venue to venture out of everything I had known about mountain bike racing until that point in my life.

Arkansas singletrack is hard. When I heard that there were rocks I was still imagining Indiana rocks, but just more of them. The problem is that Indiana trails only have rocks that were placed there after careful thought on the part of the trail builder, with great consideration regarding the flow and difficulty level desired. Arkansas just has rocks: big ones, little ones, loose ones, sharp ones, etc. They grew there themselves.

So now that I've set the mood for our tale, I will proceed with my version of the 2008 Ouachita Challenge.

As I mentioned before, the start was fast, but I didn't really know that at the time as I had no previous experience with that sort of thing. I just hammered away trying to stay mid-pack so I wouldn't "get stuck behind the slow people on the singletrack" as I had been warned about the day before. Hah! Basically, I spent the first half-hour with my heart rate about 15 beats above the early race limit I had set for myself and by the time I hit the singletrack I was having a terrible time bringing back down. My handling skills were also crap because I hadn't seen singletrack since Thanksgiving, my tires had too much air, and I was already tired. The Womble seemed to last forever and by the time I hit aid station one I had basically just finished my first cross country race of the season.

Too bad I still had a 40 mile death march to the finish.

I did get what seemed to be a too-short reprieve over highway and fire road where I did my best to spin my legs out, but it was to be the last time I felt good that day. After that the real rocks and climbing set in, draining my strength with each pedal stroke or step. The Blowout Mountain section was so hard that I don't think I was able to stay on my bike for 60 seconds straight the whole time, either because of the steep climbing over rocks or because the descent was so darn technical. That made for seven miles that took two hours to cover.

The thought of quitting crossed my mind many, many times during that section, but the fact that I had come halfway across the country to be there and the need to prove all the naysayers wrong forced me to get back on my bike after a short break at the last aid station. I'm not even sure if the Big Brushy section was really that hard, but I still had to walk a lot of it. That was because my quads refused to pedal over anything steeper than 4%, even in my easiest gear.

So when I reached the fire road at the end I was ready to rip it with every bit of strength I had left and call it a day. The guy tried to tell me how to get back to town while putting on my zip tie, but I think got distracted by the fact that he was putting in on in a stupid way. Those damn zip ties were about the only thing keeping me going at the time and I wanted it put on neatly so that I could keep them as a badge of honor. Anyway, all I heard was "down fire road, left at highway, less than 10 miles" and I threw it in my big ring and started flying down the fire road.

There must have been a turn that he didn't tell me about or that I didn't hear because after what seemed like way too long I still hadn't hit the highway and I realized there were no other bike tracks in the gravel. I stopped, looked around, pulled out my cellphone and found I had no service, and cried. Then I pedaled some more until I realized I was back at the aid station where I had been before we entered the last section of singletrack. Then I cried some more and turned around. Luckily, it didn't take long before I saw the bailout route signs back into town, so I was able to get back without totally retracing my steps.

As I was rolling up the hill with the finish in sight, albeit from the opposite direction from where I was supposed to be coming from, my phone started ringing and then a guy said, "Is that her?" I looked over to find a my mom, my friend Chrysa who I had driven down with, and a small group of volunteers forming a search party to find me.

So I may or may not be on the official results when they come out, but as far as I'm concerned, I made it back to the Oden School without any motorized help, so I finished. It wasn't what I would call "fun", but it was an important lesson in resilience that I sure I will benefit from in the future.

~~

The volunteers were nice enough to leave the showers open for me and standing in the concrete walls of the high school locker room, I have to say I had the best, most luxurious shower of my life.

I also got to eat my first Sonic in five years afterward. I chose a cheeseburger, which is totally weird for me, but it was delicious. I meant to get a picture, but I stuffed in my mouth so fast that I forgot to take one.

Hopefully, I will have some race pictures to post tomorrow.

Suitcase of Perpetuem

Yep, that's what I've packed so far. That, along with my flasks, hydration pack and bladder. I've been trying to phase things into the suitcase for a few days now, but since this is technically a "B" race I'm training right up until I leave tomorrow and keep needing to use things. So I've only been able to pack things that won't be used again before I leave.

The Anthem was retired from duty after Tuesday's workout and got it's final pre-race tuneup last night. Adam made it nice 'n' sparkly for me. Too bad all the naysayers are predicting a muddy mess for Sunday. Oh well, I love mud. If we can just coax up some pouring rain I'll be good to go.

So tonight I have to do some short hill reps on the road bike and then come home and pack. Then early tomorrow, it's off to Arkansas.

~~

As for bad news, I just got a call from the vet and it turns out that Mrs. Bigglesworth doesn't have the mysterious but ultimately harmless FLUTD that we thought she did. She has a stone in her bladder/kidney (I can't remember which) that will have to be removed surgically and will cost about $600.

Not only is that painful to hear, but I'm also just upset that she will have to have surgery. I'm very heeby-jeeby about anyone (even cats) getting cut open. Kind of ironic since I wanted to be a vet for several years of my young life. However, I got squeemish as a teenager.

Just the thought of her being shaved, doped up, and in pain for a significant amount of time bothers me, but I guess if it makes her better it will be okay. I'm trying to tell myself it's probably no worse that getting your cat spayed, but that I wasn't around for that phase of her life. I pretty much pointed to the cat I wanted at the animal shelter and a week later picked her up from the vet, so it was much less personal at the time.

T-Minus 6 Days

One week from today I will be hanging out at my parents' house in Oklahoma resting. More importantly, I should be able to officially call myself an endurance mountain bike racer at that point. Only six days until the Ouachita Challenge, and I'm anxious and excited, but not freaking out too bad. Actually, I honestly say that the biggest thing I'm worried about is that I will finish and not be last, but at some point I'll loose one of the stupid little tokens that you have to turn in at the end of the race. That would be just my luck.

My training schedule over the last couple of months is making it feel a lot more like the most expensive and logistically challenging group ride I've ever been on, rather than an actual race. I want to finish and I want to beat at least one person and I will happy. After this, I will know what to expect and can set bigger goals. I did do some anxious Googling of the start list, but quickly came to the conclusion that it is a waste of time.

The race will go something like this: Carey Lowery will beat me. The other 20-something women in the race may or may not. Just pedal the darn bike.

I pretty much did what I was supposed to do during my last week of training. Things were a bit difficult, since the moutain bike trails are muddy and the gravel roads are flooded, so my training options got pretty narrow. I had myself pretty warn out last week and had to take an unplanned day off Thursday. It was kind of okay since my workout assignment was two hours off-road to work on my technical skills, which was just not going to happen due to the conditions I just mentioned. My legs were still pretty dead for my three hour ride with hill intervals on Saturday, but I spent yesterday mostly napping and watching reality TV with just a one-hour easy ride, so I'm feeling much better now. Today is a scheduled day off and I'm hoping to kick butt tomorrow on my last real workout before the race.

Look Mom, It's Vegan and I Made It Up Myself!

Sort of. I took a Morrocan Spice Oil recipe from Vegetarian Times, mimicked Alton Brown's method of stir-frying kale, and added my own twist to make a delicious and healthy Morrocan-inspired feast. It is seriously the best meal I've made in a long time.




Morrocan Style Beans 'n' Greens

2 cups dry chickpeas
1 Tbsp tumeric
1 Tbsp cumin seeds or dried cumin
2 tsp dried red pepper flakes
1 Tbps salt
1 Tbps pepper

2 pounds curly-leaf kale
Morrocan Spice Oil
3 cloves minced garlic
More red pepper flakes
zest and juice from one lemon

Rinse and cover chickpeas with 2 inches of water and soak overnight. Drain and recover with fresh water. Add tumeric, cumin, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until chickpeas are soft. Drain, drizzle with Morrocan Spice Oil, and lightly mash with a potato masher.

Remove stems, chop, and rinse kale. Heat 1 Tbsp Morrocan Spice Oil in largest heavy pan you own (a larger broiler pan over two burners is best, but use what you have). Add garlic, lemon zest, and red pepper flakes to taste and stir. Add kale and stir fry for about 5 minutes until tender moving constantly and evenly distributing garlic and spices through greens.

Serve chickpeas on a bed of stir-fried kale and eat. Toasted pita bread would be a nice side with this.

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.

Hell or High Water

Big wheels keep on turnin'

Pissed Lindsay keeps on burnin'

Rollin', Rollin'

Rollin' down the river

I really can't think of a more accurate description of my workout tonight, except for the fact that technically it was Lampkins Ridge Road and not a river, but due to the weather it might as well have been.

I've been struggling with my conversion to Happy Zen Lindsay for the last week. Not that I'm expecting to convert that quickly, but I'm disappointed that I haven't put in more work towards that end. It sucks when you're too busy, stressed, and depressed to do things that will help you stop being busy, stressed, and depressed.

Nevertheless, I also decided that I can't take any more mental health days from training and it was time to embrace my "Week of Pain". Early in the day today I decided that my number one priority would be getting home and getting on the bike, even if it meant putting off some of my more therapeutic "to do" list items another day. I know darn well after the last couple of months, that Hard-nose Badass Suck-it-up Lindsay has a shelf life of five days at the very best, but I figured I just needed her for today and I would spend some time with Happy Zen Lindsay before my recovery ride tomorrow.

So I arrived home today in full Hard-nose Badass Suck-it-up Lindsay mode. However, I knew Adam was coming home early to leave for a concert in Indianapolis today, so I figured I'd just hang out and leave after he did to avoid the whole, "You're riding in the rain?" discussion. Being married to a bike mechanic has it's ups and downs. Unfortunately, I think he took my aloofness to be signs of depression and launched into a trite speech about, "Aren't you looking forward to nice weather and being able to train outside everyday?", which wouldn't have really been the best way to cheer me up even if I had been depressed. So the "You're riding in the rain?" discussion was launched after all. His alternative suggestions and chiding me for riding my good mountain bike tires on the road too much got me through me a bit off-track. Then a time-out to email the vet about Mrs. Bigglesworth's urinary tract health didn't help matters and by the time he was out the door I was ready to vent.

Of course, this minor disagreement or whatever you would call it would have normally just annoyed me a little, but I'd been teetering on the edge for about a week and half. General work stress and an annoying new employee that's been placed under my supervision have been working me up and I'm starting the find the dark emotional cloud that's been stalking me since January harder and harder to deal with. So in the solitude of my own home with only the cats to witness, I let Angry Lindsay loose. I screamed and stomped and threw a few things that I knew wouldn't break. Then I realized that this time was I was not going to let the gallons of adrenaline coursing through my veins turn me into a sobbing pile of Jello until I had completed my workout. Thus the hell or high water. Even after getting behind schedule, not being able to find my cycling cap, and not being able to air up the rear tire of the 'cross bike I had almost been guilted into riding due to a freakishly short valve stem, I jumped on my mountain bike with the full intention of doing my schedule time trial intervals.

I had 5 X 5K on the schedule, which I shortened to 4 X 2 miles since workout time would be more equivalent when converted to a slower bike. I also had to do an even number due to the out and back nature of my ride and not wanting to get caught in the dark. It actually went really well considering my poor fitness. Of course, the one advantage to poor fitness is that is makes it really easy to keep your heart rate above 185 when that's what you have been assigned to do. The other advantage was despite all her faults, Angry Lindsay can put out some killer athletic performances. If I can ever combine consistent training, peaking on race day, and getting completely irate about 30 minutes before an A race, there will be course records set.
In the end lactic acid has a magical way of clearing adrenaline and calming the angry beast. So does riding in thee rain (I would make a good Belgian except for my aversion to leg warmers) and I got my fair share of each. More importantly, I finally got a really workout in for the first time forever. Hopefully, the first of many.

*****

I do feel weird sharing my emotional troubles with the rest of the world, but lately I feel like I need to share with someone. It's probably better to share with mostly strangers anyway since even if they do judge you harshly, it's not like the consequences are particularly severe. Of course, I'm not actually as crazy as this post makes me sound, as I don't have actual multiple personalities. I think people who do give them different first names.

However, stress, anger, and depression are things that I've struggled with my whole life and the last few months I've been experiencing a flareup. It's just the way I'm wired. I'm doing my best to help myself re-wire, but we'll just have to see how it goes. It should be interesting.

That's Not Ham in Your Beans

This week's recipe is neither vegetarian nor particularly a recipe. Yes, I know I'm getting lazy, but I discovered something extremely cool (to me at least) last weekend and wanted to share.

Quite some time ago my mother-in-law brought us package of a bulk bean mixture similar to the "15 bean soup mix" type of things you might have seen in the grocery store. My mom used to make this sort of bean soup pretty frequently when I was younger and I really liked it, but it usually involved some ham. Adam doesn't partake in pork products and I wasn't sure how to cook proper bean soup with them. So the beans sat and sat. I even had a discussion with another semi-herbivorous co-worker a few weeks ago about how it's hard to make good beans without the use of pork. She'd apparently tried turkey bacon and it hadn't worked at all.

Then last Friday I was watching "Good Eats" on the Food Network and Alton Brown used a smoked turkey leg in a pot of collard greens. I thought it was a really good idea and decided to try it on my bean soup. Despite his assertion that smoked turkey legs should be available in most large groceries stores, I had my doubts, but I was able to find them in the frozen section at our usual Kroger. At around $5 for two gigantic legs, they were also a pretty good value.

The bean mixture came with general instructions, but no seasonings, so I improvised to my tastes and decided to go with a Cajun-esque theme. After soaking the beans overnight, I sauteed diced onions, carrots, and green peppers (the Cajun "trinity") as well as some minced garlic for a little extra something. Then I added the turkey leg, the soaked beans, a Tbsp of Cajun seasoning, a tsp cumin (Adam's suggestion to play up the smokiness), salt, pepper, and a can of "petite diced" tomatoes. I then added enough water to cover everything by about an inch, stirred, and brought it to a boil. After it reached a boil, I covered the pot and turned the heat down to the absolute lowest my stove would go. I simmered it for the rest of the afternoon (4-5 hours?) until the beans were tender and the turkey was falling off the bone. I removed the turkey skin, the bone, the long shards of cartilage that are apparently part of a turkey leg and broke up the meat into small chunks.

The result was absolutely delicious and I'm glad that discovered a way to make good beans without pork.

On the Road (Bike) Again

Last night my road bike saw daylight for the first time since October. It felt very foreign, like a light, responsive little munchin bike, after only riding my 'cross and mountain bikes all winter. However, I think the snow and ice are pretty much over and I know I won't be riding trainer again for awhile, so "Jake" was shelved for the summer and the TCR got it's first twitchy, windy ride of the season. It was pretty nice being on a clean, freshly overhauled bike with a new chain, bottom bracket, and crankset. I also have a set of new Continental road tires with "black chili" compound, but they haven't been installed yet.

Adam got me a compact crankset for Christmas and I finally got to test it out yesterday (compact gearing is pretty irrelevant on the trainer). It's kind of funny that after two years of grinding through the hills of Bloomington he finally decided to make things easier on me. I jokingly told him that he should hold off installing it, as I would be needing to trade it in for whatever Mario Cipollini used by spring. That was when I was still faithfully slaving away at the "Hour of Power" and various other trainer workouts on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I kind of crapped out on the next phase of my base training, so at this point I'm in not-so-great shape and couldn't tell much difference with the easier gearing.

As for being out of shape, it looks like I won't have to wait until Ouachita to pay the price for that. I got next week's training plan from Coach Dave and it appears that mountain bike season waits for no woman. The plan is moving right along and it's up to me to catch up. On the menu is: two hours with 5 X 5K TTs on Tuesday, two hours of hills Thursday, two and a half hours with 5 x a half-mile 8+% hill and then 5 x a one mile 3-4% hill on Saturday, and 3+ hours at moderate pace on Sunday. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are kind enough with light strength work and easy spinning, but all I can think when I look at my calendar is OUCHEE!

I guess it's better now that in the middle of a race though.

What's Up With That?

I missed my 9:30 bedtime again last night, but only by 3 minutes. My sleep quality wasn't the best as I was cold (I had a load of laundry in the dryer and was down to the pajama dregs) and not used to going to going bed that early. I still felt better than yesterday, so we'll see how the experiment goes. Of course, I would have made it to bed on time if hadn't spent 10-15 minutes pouring over old heart rate files dealing the following conundrum.

Of course, I'm sure I could find a message board to post on somewhere, but it just felt like it would be more fun to submit it to the vast endurance-racing knowledge of the blogosphere. The question: Why are the finish times for the Lumberjack about 1.5 hours faster than the Mohican on average, despite the fact that the Lumberjack has 60 more miles of singletrack and 2000 more feet of climbing (at least according the respective race websites)?I started discussing this with a fellow Bloomington MTB-chick and aspiring edurance racer a few weeks ago. Our discussion was based purely on percentage of singetrack and we came to the conclusion that the Mohican must be much more climby.

I filed it away in my brain until after what I considered to be a very climby dirt road ride that came in at about 4000 ft. over 45 miles. So I decided to check out the course description on the Lumberjack website. Low and behold, it reported 13,000 ft of climbing over 100 miles, a much bigger percentage than my training ride.

So now I'm just really confused. Can someone whose experienced these races please explain to me "What's up with that?"

Let There Be Light

The Uniform Time Act of 1966, signed into Public Law 89-387 on April 12, 1966, by President Lyndon Johnson, created Daylight Saving Time to begin on the last Sunday of April and to end on the last Sunday of October. And it allowed cyclists with 8-5 jobs to train after work without getting caught in the dark and we saw that it was good.

That's it. The whole "lack of light" training excuse is done for another eight months. Woohoo!

Of course, it's not all sunshine and rainbows just yet. Adam and I both had a horrible time falling asleep last night and I was barely able to stay awake at my desk the first few hours of the morning. On top of that, I made a vow last week to start getting 8.5-9 hours of sleep, even on weeknights, so I picked a pretty crappy time to start trying to go to bed at 9:30. So far, I have not been successful a single night. However, I really think that it will help my mental and physical health if I can stop procrastinating in the evenings. I also went to the library and checked out "Meditation & Relaxation in Plain English" and "Five Good Minutes an Evening". While I'm hoping that I'm just going through some late-season Seasonal Affective Disorder that will be clearing up soon, it's probably a good idea to take some proactive steps toward curing the funk I've been in the last eight weeks. I've come to the conclusion that I've got to get my mind right before I can expect my body to perform the way I want it to.

Really Late Non-Vegetarian Recipe of the Week

I've really been searching for some delicious new vegetarian recipes, but I've not had much luck lately. My go-to source for recipes is normally Food Network, but they have so many recipes that it's a blessing and a curse. It has a lot to choose from, but a lot to get bogged down by, as well. They have recently improved their search features, but there's still not a lot of nutritional thought put into what comprises a vegetarian entree on that site. I've been browsing the recipes on Vegetarian Times , but a lot of it is a little boring for my adventurous palate. I guess I'll just have to start making stuff up. I'm trying to think up some sort of cassarole with beans, veggies, and a lot of spice/flavor. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Anyway, until then I'm recycling old standbys and I'm planning on making these sometime before the week's over. They have lots of flavor and are surprisingly moist, so I serve them bun-free, but that's up to you.

Southeast Asian Turkey Burgers

1 large garlic clove
2 slices bread of your choice
1 pound lean ground turkey
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro sprigs
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco or similar hot sauce
4 light hamburger buns

Mince garlic. Into a blender tear bread slices and grind into fine crumbs. In a bowl with your hands mix garlic with bread crumbs and remaining burger ingredients until just combined (do not overmix) and form into 4 (1-inch-thick) patties. Place on an indoor grill, about 5 minutes on each side or until cooked through.

The Backswing and the Upswing

Things were looking bad there for a while. I spent a good portion of the last 2-4 weeks looking and feeling like a real-life embodiement of those "Depression Hurts" commercials except I was shoving a lot more food into my mouth. I can't really even say what what was wrong. The most craptastic weather of recent memory didn't help, but I think a lot it had to do with my overconfidence in being Superstar Winter Training Girl. When things got tough, I sat on the couch and ate ice cream. That was the backswing.

Now I'm back on the upswing. The sunny weather and the realization that I was weeks away from my Expert Class debut helped get me going again. I've got four days back on the wagon under my belt and just a few more days left before Daylight Savings Time starts. I'm trying not think about adding up hours and just focus on getting on my bike everyday except for Monday and Friday. Those are my plyo days. If I keep doing that day after day I'll be fine.

In addition to the cheery weather, Adam surprised me with pink cable housing on my mountain bike. I think it looks pretty good with the black and silver (excuse the dirt). He's been suprising me with occasional bike gifts, which are almost always pink, since about our second or third date. I think he's trying to turn me into Mountain Bike Barbie (if only Barbie would actually try mountain biking), but generally I like his taste.