Two Wheel Blogs

Today's story is about pushing one's luck. In this case, just a little too far.

Dave, Jordan and I set out this morning to pre-ride the state road race course. None of us had seen it so we wanted to get a look at it before next week's race.

A quick look at the weather before heading out showed we'd be OK. Sun would turn to clouds, which would turn to thunderstorms later in the afternoon. No problem, we thought. That gives us plenty of time to ride it. Twice even.

Unit and I hit out on the road yesterday for about an hour's ride. As he rolled out I distinctly remember hearing him say something about "recovery". Cool, I thought to myself. After two tough days of riding this weekend an easy Monday spin should bring a little life back into these legs.

A mile down the road - actually up, because he lives at the bottom of a hill - I'm wheezing and gasping for breath, legs on fire. This is recovery?

I've got "Down in a Hole" from Alice in Chains playing in my head today. I don't know where that came from but it's there. I'm sure I haven't heard that song in months.

It does fit my situation though. In the last three days I've piled on over 400 TSS and driven TSB down by almost 20 points. The elastic has been stretched.

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The last couple of week's training haven't been exactly what I had in mind for this time of year. Our weather has only afforded me a precious few opportunities to get out and do those epic training rides. You know the kind of rides I mean, the ones that turn ordinary legs into race ready weapons.

Not only that, but this Wednesday night TT series, combined with all the great racing opportunities on the weekends, makes it hard to maintain CTL.

And maintaining fitness is really about all I've been able to accomplish the last couple of weeks. The week before last I managed a respectable 741 TSS. This last week my TSS total fell to 621. That's what two short timetrial events in a week will do. Intense as they were, they amounted to precious few TSS points.

The next event on my docket is the Tour of Hermann Timetrial. It takes place tomorrow, Saturday. There is also a Road Race on Sunday, but I didn't get the word to register soon enough and the field filled up. So I'm doing the TT only.

Hopefully I learned something from Wednesday's timetrial, like maybe how to manage my power output a little better. Of course the weather played a big factor on Wednesday. Hopefully tomorrow won't be nearly so windy as that.

I've turned into a weather wimp. Three or four days indoors hiding from the weather and I could barely stand the 50° "cold" this afternoon.

Well, ok. It wasn't really that bad. I did ride after all. But I was surprised at how cool a sunny day felt relative to the actual temperature.

And I had a good ride too. I decided to do a little test to see how well my training is coming along. Four laps around Babler park comprised the test. A hard hour's riding. Not quite at race pace, but hard all the same.