Sweet Release

I woke up bright and early today. 7:30 is bright and early for me these days. Stayed up an hour or so, had a piece of bread and glass of milk, checked my emails, and decided to make some coffee. By the time I got through cleaning up the kitchen, and putting the dishes in the dishwasher, I started to feel the fatigue from yesterday's ride. I knew if I had coffee I'd have that crappy 'tired and wired' feeling all day, so I pulled the plug and went back to bed.

I slept till **gasp** 13:00, and was kind of incredulous when I looked at the clock. I looked twice, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and looked again. Wow, I WAS tired. At my age tired can't be fought, at least not for more than a few days. Enjoy your 30's when you can burn the candle at both ends for months or even years on end. It's not going to last. Oh, and yes, you will have to pay back that sleep debt, well, unless you have a heart attack and die. Then you can sleep while you're dead!

When I woke up this morning the sun was out and the sky was mostly blue and blazing. By the time 13:00 rolled around, the weather was closing in again. I made coffee, ate some almonds to buffer the tons and tons of sugar I put in my coffee, and started to feel really strong. By 2:30 I wanted to ride. I was amping big time. I had a lot of dirty riding clothes though, and was trying to figure out how to ride and not have to get into dirty clothes. Ick!

As it was I had just enough clean riding clothes to get out the door, even if the debate and prep had taken me until after 4:00 pm. Rushing I forgot one thing after another. HR monitor. Strip off the jersey and roll down the tights. Balaclava. Unzip the wind vest and jersey, and take off the helmet and glasses. It wasn't clean, but at least it was dry. Arm warmers. Well, wasn't sure I'd need them, but stuffed them in the giant pocket in the back of the wind vest.

Wow, was I ever amped. I rode the first 4 miles like a bat out of hell. Energy to burn, and on an empty stomach too. Good recovery protocols last night really did the trick. I was just worried I'd fade into oblivion later in the ride, but wanted to enjoy the power surge anyway. :D  Take it as it comes!

Starting away from the Sunrise 'Y' I took a short breather and two long pulls off the Gatorade bottle. As I turned right to parallel the river, the wind started to kick up a bit. It was building quickly and within a few minutes I was bucking a 10mph wind. Have I mentioned how wonderful aerobars are? :D  Down and hammering, pushing tall-ish gears too. Where did all this energy come from? The caramel ice-cream I had last night? Is that the ultimate recovery food? Ben and Jerry's? Ummm, doubt it, but wherever it came from, I was really enjoying the ride.

It started raining for real right before Hagen Park, and in my short-sleeve jersey and vest I was a little worried, but figured if I kept the pace up I'd make plenty of heat to stay warm. It worked. I never did stop to put on the arm warmers, and when I got home my jersey, balaclava, and vest were once again sweat soaked. Wow, I must make a lot of heat. Maybe I should try riding bare-chested! OK, nobody needs to see that!

Back to back rides are something I rarely do. I have needed a recovery day in-between hard workouts for at least 15 yrs, so I was pretty impressed with the level of the ride today. Unfortunately, I pushed the wrong button on the Garmin, and turned it off instead of hitting the LAP button. Sigh.

While trying to figure out what happened to the last lap of my ride's telemetry I got to looking at yesterday's trace, and confirmed the numbers I thought I saw with stolen glances at the top of Beal's yesterday. I might have set a new PB climbing the last 10% pitch at 12+ mph. That's 600+ watts torquing it in the saddle - until I coughed up a lung and collapsed while rolling downhill into the parking lot. If not a PB, it's close. Here's the trace.

Ooooh, this just in. I calced my power on that short little kicker of a hill just before Boyer Dr, and at 10mph on a 16% grade it works out to 771 watts standing and hammering. Not a PB, but pretty decent.