taperize me batman

so we had an easy week. and boy was it easy. the first two days we did somewhat hard workouts and i was gassed. then we took a day off in the middle, headed down to do our 230 mile bike ride for the weekend.

saturday was the first half and the wind was pretty crazy. really hard riding at times. and then there were times when that 40mph gust would blow you down the street. there were a lot of very tired bikers out there.

my ride was a bit of a disaster. tire went slow leaky from about half way to the end. didnt notice right away and then i didnt care too much and rode it flat the last 20 miles. the resa's rear tire ( it is always the rear, so was mine ) also went flat. pumped her's up and since we were both going very slow we decided to just tough out that flat too and we both came in pretty worn out.

so what did we learn? well, i for one have a new passion in life, and that is to get slippery in the wind. i was wearing a big jacket and baggy pants and i paid badly for it. normally i dont ride in the cold or we are cold and not windy. but this was both and i had on a lot of balloony stuff and the wind was pretty harsh. so at the halfway point i skimmed it down to tight stuff and that made the rest of the day easier. sadly my legs were pretty blown and i then got the flat.

also, more nasty was that the wind blew on my just operated on eye. it dried it out really bad and when i rubbed it i think i yanked the flap off a bit as i couldnt see through it any more. also stung like a motherscratcher.

the next morning i fixed both flats... resa's tire is completely rotted out and an air bubble popped out and blew up the new tube. i decided not to ride the trip on sunday from my eye. my legs were better than i thought they would be. beta - alanine i am guessing. either that or maybe i am getting in better shape? :-)

well, after i decided to not go sunday i swapped my rear wheel with hers. and then my tire on her bike was flat a half hour later. we drove out to her and she said lets pack it in. she didnt feel like doing the 8 hour ride back up the hill alone anyway. the bikes are pretty old and need a lot of care right now. so rather than going through all the bother of cleaning the dirt off them and oiling the chain and stuff we decided to upgrade our 30 pound bikes with 17 pound ones. so we are off to the store to look at new high end bikes tonight. we have talked about it for a few months and we might desperately need the 30 minutes or so we could maybe get with new bikes.

this next week is a harder one and the following should be our hardest of the year with 3 triathlons on the weekend. feel pretty rested today.


scores!

mentally: 8 - this is the hard one... i really have no answer for what state i am in. feel lame about the easy week. scared about my eye being big trouble, but good about my recovery from a hard ride and really good about maybe getting a new toy. but i also had the worst ride of the year on saturday and didnt get to even go on sunday. so i give it an 8.

physically: 9 - felt gassed on wednesday - at that point i would give me a 4, but a few days off and a great rebound from the 113 miles into the wind. also all systems are back on line, no sore back or neck or foot, all recovered. even my eye which kept me from riding yesterday is at about 80% now. looks like time off worked wonders. :-)

workouts: 3 - worst set of crap of the year. pretty focking awful. at least i didnt gain weight. had panic attacks in the pool for the first time in 30 weeks and felt all around burned out wednesday.




what i am going to work on mentally over the next few months is getting control of my emotions. i still get a little too down on myself over bad days. let it linger a bit. also i look forward too much. i dont think i was in really bad shape wednesday but thinking ahead to the weekend got me all messed in the head. so thats my primary homework. and! i get to start right away as my first ever 1/2 ironman is in 12 days and we are not tapering a bit for it. also to warm it up there are 2 quarter ironmans the day before. ( just smiling here )

should be fun.