Two Wheel Blogs

This morning I started riding on the trainer. It did not take long to realize this was not my "Best". I have compiled some thoughts below about what your "best" might be. Today, I realized it more than ever...some days are good days, some days are bad days. On a really good day, I can get pretty close to my best...Today was NOT one of those days.

How close have you come to your “Best”

A couple years ago I trained my ass off for a TT (the state championship). I had all the best stuff. I put a lot of stock in this race and probably shifted too many of my priorities toward the effort.

Well, my performance in the championship was great. That was fine and all, but more interesting than the race, was a training ride I had a month prior. Yup, that is right, I don’t recall much about the race, or the medal, but I sure remember that training ride. Here is what happened:

I was coming off a block of training 3x20 LT workouts (typically 2 a week) with hard rides on the weekends to boot. After like 4 weeks of that I wanted to see what I might expect for a 40K time….it should have been sort of lousy coming off 4 hard weeks, so I didn’t expect much other than to show a worst case scenario…right?

After a short warm up, I started my 40K ride on my TT bike in regular riding gear (no aero helmet, no shoe covers, no body suit, not even my special wheels). After the turn, I was dieing. I did not believe that I could finish the 20K stretch to get back to the start area. Every turn of the crank was hurting. I counted the breaths of moist air as I drooled uncontrollably on my SRM controller.

15K to go. My face and chin are covered with snot and drool, my legs are on fire. A crash at this point would not hurt any worse than I already feel….I need to dig deep!

10K to go. My legs hurt so bad I can SEE, and HEAR the pain. My peripheral vision is blurred, my ears ring.

5K to go. I am sure I can not make it at this pace, but what if I could?

3K to go. I am positive that I can not make it at this pace, I hope that I flat, I hope a car runs me off the road…anything….any excuse I can get handed to me to get out of this…as much as I want it, I am ready to lay down and die to stop the pain!....
STOP THINKING, YOU PANZY!

I set a personal record that I may never best. Not with my disc wheel, or my front wheel that cost more than a lot of bikes, not with a skin suit, or an aero helmet. A month later WITH all that crap, and a bomb proof taper prescribed by one of the most informed training managers around, I was not able to best that performance. When I finished the race, I knew it, not from the data from my SRM or the timekeeper, but by how I felt….I knew it was nowhere near my “best” work.

I don’t care. I had my ride. No one was there to see it, but I knew that I had suffered like I can only when properly motivated. I was high on that performance for about a week after it was over. The feeling of knowing that I had done something that few people could, was incredible. What was it that I did? The 40K time? NO! What I did, was push myself so far past what I thought I could stand, and live to tell about it. More important than that, I knew that regardless of how I performed any other time, on that particular day, I was close, yes CLOSE to my “best” for those particular circumstances. Why Close? I can never be sure what I could have accomplished if I had somehow dug even deeper.

Someone once told me that a perfect race car is one that completely falls apart at the finish line. It was built for one purpose and having fulfilled that purpose it is done, dead, junk. By the same analog, I guess a “best” performance for a bike racer means he must consume every bit of energy, and therefore die as the finish is reached….that is a pretty steep price.