So....after Marion, the coach/mentor guy told me that I should take the rest of June off from structured training and just ride for fun/by how I feel......
I've tried to do that this week. Tuesday, I didn't feel too bad after Marion, so figured I would get out and do a short-ish recovery ride. It was really hot & humid and windy. My water was hot, I was not having fun. Then Wednesday, I thought I would try again since it was a bit cooler. Oh boy, not 6-8min into my ride, a cool wind starts blowing, the sky gets dark in the direction I'm going, and the temps seem to drop. I had planned on about 40 miles, but when I got to 10 miles, I started hearing thunder and decided that maybe I should turn around. I figured it was gonna start raining and that I better try to beat it back to the car!
I had a nice tailwind and went pretty hard for about 4 miles or so. Then I started to smell the rain. You can smell it once it hits the hot pavement. It was really large drops too. Not a lot to begin with, then it got a little more frequent, then it was just an all out friggen torrential downpour! Stinging rain on my face, arms, legs. Coming at me from the side and the front. Wind blowing really hard. Water standing on the road about half an inch in depth. It was a bit scary cause I didn't have any lights and was worried about not being seen by the cars. Worried also about just crashing in general due to the water.
About 6-7 miles later, I arrive back at the car, throw everything into the car and head home....to no rain!! Not a drop of rain at my house!
Then there was no riding yesterday due to a Code Red air quality in my area from the smoke from the fire down east in Hyde County. No riding today either for the same reason. So, I took my bike with me to work so that I could get it cleaned up. Water in the rear wheel and in the frame. I got all of that out (I hope) and used up just about all of the WD-40 to get all the grit/grease/grime off the chain. Q-tips were used too. Then re lubed it. It's ready to ride the next time I am.
Tomorrow I have a Beginner kayak course that lasts through Sunday. I hope that I will feel like riding later in the evening on Saturday/Sunday. Coach/mentor guy doesn't think I will feel like it, but I'd like to prove him wrong. We'll see.
Now, as for this unstructured riding mess......I do not like it. I do not like unstructured; I live for structure. But, I'll give it a try next week and see if I feel any differently. If I don't, then I'm going to start back on the intervals again - maybe work on the longer ones, 3x10min in zone 4 or some 2x20min zone 4, and some high cadence drills. Maybe I'll ask the coach/mentor guy for suggestions.
That's pretty much it for this week....not much going on.....got something planned for next weekend though....more riding in my favorite area!
5 comments:
Let's go ride them hills!
ha. you betcha! :)
Could the fact that you recently had a higher resting heart rate and felt pretty bad during the AoM be a sign of getting overtrained? Maybe, it is a good idea to rest a bit before starting with the intervals again... I've been overtrained before and it is not fun - I always felt like I hated riding and did it only because i "had to train". Once I rested, I was loving it again.
could be...i was getting to the point that i just wanted to get Marion over with and be done with the training for a while.
i haven't ridden my road bike since last week when i got rained on. it's been all mtb, granted only 2x, but i'm actually having fun riding that right now. i will try to ride mtb again either tomorrow or thursday.
i haven't checked rhr this week, but will start doing that in the morning and see what it's like.
To me, the greatest fun on the road bike comes when you have only a vague "plan" of where / how far you are going to ride. And then add or reduce based on the feel that develops.
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