Normally we'd be in Hatteras this week, windsurfing/kiting. The wife and I don't yet really kite but we were planning on going dark side thus year. Through a somewhat complex set of circumstances, we aren't there. Trip delayed. So of course what I do is fire up the interwebs and see what the wind is like down there. Normally you'll get three days of reall quality breeze, a day or two of 'eh' and a day or two of nothing. Of course this year it was windy all weekend, it's windy today and it looks like the onlyday that won't be great is Wednesday. Wednesday should be merely okay. Gah!
Of course Saturday's wind here was fun to ride in. Either no one showed up for the 10am or I missed it. Was running a few minutes late so took Military in instead of Broad Branch to make up time. Then of course I discovered that I badly needed to take a dump, so ducked into that stone cave bathroom above Military, finished up and broke north. It was like 10:20 when I was back on the road, just about exactly the right time for the ride to go by. No such. Did the route alone, trying as much as possible to press it in the hard spots and generally go fast. I notice that when the 10am or similar rides are really hot, you get a lot of solid intervals in the 3 to 5 minute range. I find those to be beneficial, not necessarily to train that power band but to train recovery and develop the psychological wherewithal to keep going back to the wall. I get the most valuable training when I'm pushing myself to ride with the really strong dudes. That kind of work is a component of the greater scheme, but it's the one where I really benefit from factors I can't produce on my own. I'm a hunting dog, and as much as you want to throw steady state and LT at the question, when the bar gets raised you gotta be able to jump higher.
We spent the rest of the day finishing up a painting project and doing fall cleaning. The place looks awesome.
Like Stevie Ray Vaughn, I just couldn't stand the weather on Sunday and wound up on the trainer. Happy happy joy joy. An hour and a quarter of flat tempo. Legs felt like shite. A lot of times when I feel like this I try (often succesfully) to unbrick my legs by doing some hard/easy alternations, but I think I felt like I needed to do some penance yesterday. I was very concerned about the unintended consequences of a decision I'd made, and pissed off about the dominance that the box has over our lives. Not that box. The other one - the one that crappy jingoistic managers tell their charges to think outside of. Personally, I've never gotten along too well with that box and am usually being encouraged to rein it in. Well, score one for the box yesterday. La boîte, la boîte, toujours la boîte!
I'll get to spend some quality time this week figuring out the way forward through some fouled up stuff. Good friends are hard to come by. You really don't want to bum them out.
2 comments:
It'll be a "good" test...if they're bummed they're friends... if they're mad they're not.
True this. It's a complex situation that fits as
much in the 'no good deed goes unpunished' bin as anywhere else.
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