Athlete Blogs
February 25th, 2009The grind part Deux
Day two of the grind. I was determined to have a solid workout today, I have two rest days coming up so no excuses and no whining about legs hurting, etc.
I slept well, woke up pretty fresh and ready to roll. From the first pedal stroke I knew I was in for it today - the legs felt "dead". Like I raced a stage race or something. But there are days when you pack it in, when you CAN"T produce power and days when you CAN, it just hurts and the PE is higher. Today was the latter.
I was prepared to make the call to pack it in, but not before I completed the first 5:00 of my first 20:00 interval. Standard practice. I rolled through that 5:00 mark fine, completed the first 20:00 right on target. The second one sucked. The PE crept up and up. Since I already proved to myself I COULD do the workout I wasn't about to quit at minute 7, 11, whatever - not gonna happen. Even missing 4 minutes of the interval would totally wreck my day. So I ended up rocking the second one at even better power. 340w and 345w. Nice.
One thing alot of riders do is they wake up tired, too tired to work really hard - but they go out and ride 2-3 hrs or whatever easier because you can pretty much always do that. For me it's binary - you can either ride hard intervals or you need to rest. No in between nonesence. At least not for me, not for the guys I coach. I can't remember any race that consisted of riding medium the whole time.
cheers,
Coach Pete
