Lost In Translation

Back to the Monday, work Monday. Sitting at 196 this morning, +3 pounds since Saturday. I'm back into a pattern where I bloat up after a weekend of hard riding. I had gotten to a point where I was able to maintain my weight through the weekend, more or less. I'll get back to where I need to be assuming I keep at it. This is just a matter of me verifying that the last 6 weeks have really chewed up and spit out my fitness. I'm feeling more or less healthy, my clothes were fitting better, and the scale had started to relent a bit last week. But Monday morning finds me back at a +10 as compared with my pre-vacation weight. My pants are tight.

The first H2H race is 2 weeks from yesterday and I think I might be able to cobble together a reasonable showing, where reasonable is top 20 in my class. I'm not expecting anything beyond that with good reason. Since I came back my motivation isn't there. I woke up at 5:00 Friday and just surfed for an hour instead of getting on the bike. I didn't even bother setting the alarm today. I had 2 hard rides this weekend so I'm taking today off. I need to walk a fine line between hitting it hard enough versus not over-taxing myself between now and the race. Yet if I don't build up I'll struggle through the whole race season.

You know though, it's a lot of empty words at this point. I just don't have the endurance nor the motivation that I had before the trip which are 2 big requirements to putting a lot of time into it. Something got lost in translation when I went and came back and now I'm reaping the "benefits". I'm not able to ride for 2 hours at pace like I had been able to. Hitting 90 minutes is a chore in itself. And my power on the hills is starting to fade. I'm still able to hammer out a pretty good pace on the tempo rides but I can tell it's not all there. What's more is that after I hit those rides, my residual fatigue lasts a lot longer than I'm used to. So this morning, after 2 weekend rides of hitting the high-end stuff, I'm cooked and in need of a rest day, all bloated up like a brined turkey. My legs hurt walking out of the Path.

There's my token biking post on the week. I've tailed off with the bike posts because it gets boring to read the same stuff over and over. But I do plan to race still, even if maybe not as often as I had planned. It seems a waste to squander my money when I'm not bringing my best to the table. It's also worth noting that this 2 month process to get my bike built has taken a lot of steam out of my sails. In theory this might have been done before I even went on vacation. That was something on 6 weeks ago now. My excitement to get a new bike has gone, and now it's just one delay after another. Someday my ship will come in.