Taste the Pain
Off today. Looks like I'm going with 3 on, 2 off, 3 on, then fly away.
My teammate Ruth, national xTerra qualifier, seems to think I don't need to worry about 2 weeks off at all, that I would be fine if I didn't ride at all and would in all likelihood come back refreshed. She may be right, and a small voice inside my head, the one next to the guy saying, "Eat it! Eat it all!!!" is saying the same thing. Take 2 weeks off, enjoy yourself (as best you can), get on a bike here and there if you can, and come back refreshed.
Maybe, but I'm not entirely buying it.
ChrisG
"Damn straight it hurts. I went out late Saturday morning on my geared road bike, first ride (apart from the trainer) on that bike since October 28. I rode 45 minutes to the bike shop in Atlantic Highlands to hook up with two teammates, and then we headed into the hills of Middletown and Holmdel, a set loop which I've done several times this winter on my fixed gear. The first climb I stuck with my plan of staying in the saddle and spinning an easier gear at a higher cadence. It was immediately clear that the high-end power part of my fitness is compromised right now, as that climb HURT in ways that hitting it out of the saddle in a bigger gear has not. This scenario was repeated on several more upgrades over the course of the next 2 hours or so. So I feel your pain. I assumed I'd be in this place training-wise now. I have eight weeks to work on this element before mtb race season really kicks in. Wahoo."
I'm glad someone else is there with me. I'd really like to get some more rides in with you and some of the other team. Can you guys all move to Long Hill? And do your wives do babysitting?
Plenty of time to get there, and since you've been there I would imagine it's easier to get back, though neither of us is getting any younger. Well, I did last week but that was because of the aliens and the vodka, not in that particular order.
So Greg Lemond said that it never hurts any less, you just get used to the pain. All this time I thought he was being snarky but it's more true than I would have guessed. I'm pushing up hills at an effort that would have cramped me last year. And I feel my legs on the edge, ready to pop, but they never do. But I'm used to it now and I have a much higher pain tolerance. It used to be that this amount of hurt would last 15 seconds then I would have to back off. Now I can press, and press, and press, and it hurts like a bitch but I keep going. This is resonant with something else I once read that said you'll never know how hard you can go if you don't keep pushing. They also said it's farther than you think you could push.
So when you wrap that all up, I'm at a level I've never seen before. The last thing I want to do is drop it because I'm a load for 2 weeks. After the cruise in the fall I had dropped like a brick but there was also a lag before vacation and a 10 day drinking binge. I'm almost entirely off the sauce right now, last Thursday notwithstanding that comment.
That's the bike post for Tuesday.
My teammate Ruth, national xTerra qualifier, seems to think I don't need to worry about 2 weeks off at all, that I would be fine if I didn't ride at all and would in all likelihood come back refreshed. She may be right, and a small voice inside my head, the one next to the guy saying, "Eat it! Eat it all!!!" is saying the same thing. Take 2 weeks off, enjoy yourself (as best you can), get on a bike here and there if you can, and come back refreshed.
Maybe, but I'm not entirely buying it.
ChrisG
"Damn straight it hurts. I went out late Saturday morning on my geared road bike, first ride (apart from the trainer) on that bike since October 28. I rode 45 minutes to the bike shop in Atlantic Highlands to hook up with two teammates, and then we headed into the hills of Middletown and Holmdel, a set loop which I've done several times this winter on my fixed gear. The first climb I stuck with my plan of staying in the saddle and spinning an easier gear at a higher cadence. It was immediately clear that the high-end power part of my fitness is compromised right now, as that climb HURT in ways that hitting it out of the saddle in a bigger gear has not. This scenario was repeated on several more upgrades over the course of the next 2 hours or so. So I feel your pain. I assumed I'd be in this place training-wise now. I have eight weeks to work on this element before mtb race season really kicks in. Wahoo."
I'm glad someone else is there with me. I'd really like to get some more rides in with you and some of the other team. Can you guys all move to Long Hill? And do your wives do babysitting?
Plenty of time to get there, and since you've been there I would imagine it's easier to get back, though neither of us is getting any younger. Well, I did last week but that was because of the aliens and the vodka, not in that particular order.
So Greg Lemond said that it never hurts any less, you just get used to the pain. All this time I thought he was being snarky but it's more true than I would have guessed. I'm pushing up hills at an effort that would have cramped me last year. And I feel my legs on the edge, ready to pop, but they never do. But I'm used to it now and I have a much higher pain tolerance. It used to be that this amount of hurt would last 15 seconds then I would have to back off. Now I can press, and press, and press, and it hurts like a bitch but I keep going. This is resonant with something else I once read that said you'll never know how hard you can go if you don't keep pushing. They also said it's farther than you think you could push.
So when you wrap that all up, I'm at a level I've never seen before. The last thing I want to do is drop it because I'm a load for 2 weeks. After the cruise in the fall I had dropped like a brick but there was also a lag before vacation and a 10 day drinking binge. I'm almost entirely off the sauce right now, last Thursday notwithstanding that comment.
That's the bike post for Tuesday.
1 Comments:
At 5:12 PM,
Anonymous said…
Dood, I'd be so down with moving to hillier environs, but it would be tough to pull it off in NJ.
We bought our house in Fall 1993, when the market was really good to us, and then re-fied in 2003, when rates were stupid-low. So now I have only ten years left on my mortgage, and the house is worth more than twice what we paid for it.
If we sell, we're taking our bag o' cash and heading to western North Carolina. I'll get a job teaching HS or JC English, and Christine will learn to serve lattes at the local Starbucks or something.
As interesting as this scenario is to us, it won't be happening, since we're not down with moving so far away from the families.
I live a little over a mile from the ocean and barely care most of the time. Oh well.
-ChrisG
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