End of 5 Days Straight Riding

Which wouldn't be a big deal if that was all I was doing...

The festival ended yesterday with this workout:
Bike 1:45: WU: 20' Easy MS: 3 x 15' (3') @ FT, 5' Easy, 6 x 1' (2') @ 120% CD: 5' Easy
Run :40: Z2 out, Z3 back

It was about 92 degrees or so (it was 90 in the shade at home) and very humid. I didn't get much sleep at all (5 hours?) the night before because, well, it's hard to sleep well right now.

I drank the better part of a can of Coke before I started, and had a 300-calorie bottle of my personal Infinit (also loaded with caffeine) to ride with. I felt a little creeped out since the day before there were 3 attempts on my life by drivers while out riding. What I learned from those experiences is this: cars have no idea how fast I (we) are going on our bikes. They think they can outrun you from a dead stop. Nope!

As I was doing the warmup, I could feel the hot sun on me. Because of the Coke or in spite of it, I didn't feel mentally tired, but I could tell my legs were not really recovered from the last 4 days of riding, but oh well. The objective is always to do the best you can given the conditions and your physical state.

As I drew near to my interval loop, I had a slight sense of dread, which is normal when I'm doing these types of rides. How will it feel? Can I do it? I know how it should feel--pretty fucking hard. Can I do it? Probably.

With the heat and the humidity and the effort level required, I found that I was mouth breathing like a fish! It's simply an extreme desire for as much oxygen as I can pump into the system. Last week when I was doing an interval ride, a guy rode up on me and asked if I was racing in August. There's a criterium close to home every year, and I guess he figured me for someone who races!

I ride my interval loop pretty much every Tuesday, and as a result, I have acquired a number of "fans." I go past a few small factories right around noon, and some of the workers are outside on the lawn smoking cigarettes or eating a sack lunch. As hard as I'm working, and as much as I'm mouth breathing and going pretty fast, I manage to smile quite a bit, and I happily wave to them as I ride by them numerous times. I think, "They are working, but so am I."

Tuesday is also garbage day for the homes within my loop, so I see the same guy driving the truck every week, and he waves and smiles at me when I pass as well. He also gives me berth when he sees me coming up to pass him. A few of the mail carriers recognize me, too, and they give me a thumbs up or a wave, but always with a smile, and I'm happy to smile back.

What my fans don't know is that what appears to be a smile on my face is a combination smile and teeth gritting when I'm in the midst of an interval. To the casual observer, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And sometimes I'm not sure myself, but I do know that photos captured of me racing on my bike that show a smile on my face are that precise look.

So I banged out the first :15 interval, and all I could think is that 3 minutes of rest is not going to be enough. But that's how it goes--I pedalled easy until I got to the one stop sign that I typically must obey and started the second interval from there. Which added maybe 9 seconds of rest. I don't obsess about that stuff.

As I began the second :15 interval, I thought, what the fuck, my legs are pretty tired. Oh well, keep going, keep doing the best you can, that's the point of all of this, I guess, to see what I've got after doing intervals Saturday and Sunday, and oh, wasn't it nice I made it more difficult by not sleeping? I still managed a pretty good effort, and during my next 3' rest, all I could think was, "Only one more to go!" That's always a good feeling.

During Number 3, I began thinking about the shit that followed after some more rest. I thought, "Now those will be fun." Number 3 came and went, I was happy for 5' rest, and I was happy for the next set of intervals. 120% of FTP basically means go balls out as hard as you can go you can hardly stand it. I've done that for 30 seconds, but it's a little more difficult to hold that for a minute. But I did, knowing that I had a luxurious 2 minutes of rest afterwards! When I finished these, my next thought was oh, fuck, I have to run. I wonder how that is going to feel?

When I got home, I drank an entire 16-oz. bottle of ice cold water (my engine coolant, as it were), changed into running shorts, grabbed a 12-oz. bottle of Gatorade, tuneage, visor, donned running shoes, and I'm off.

How can I describe how my legs feel running off a bike ride like that? Like I'm doing a fucking race, that's how. Only maybe worse. No taper, no rest the day before, 2 bricks on the weekend, no sleep. Perfect! I never feel like I'm moving much when I start to run in a workout like this, but I am. It's really, fucking hot now, and at least while I was on the bike I generated some breeze in addition to the hot wind, but not so much while running. And when I take off from home, it's a .25 mile climb up a hill. GREAT!

Now I need to decide which direction I'm going to go. I decide to go into the wind so that maybe I can catch a break on the way home. It's so fucking hot that I decide I'm running on the sidewalk (ah, whiteness reflecting the sun and shade at times), and I decided to run the same route as if I was riding to my interval loop, which would be a nice change of pace. Not hilly--I didn't really need to run hills right now.

OMG the sweat is just streaming off me right now, and I know I must be glistening like an oiled pig. But thank God for my visor with the dark underside and really dark sunglasses (I wore my Catlike's) to keep all that sun out of my face. I actually ran a pretty decent pace, and I enjoyed actually looking at the landscaping I was passing. Of course, my brain kept playing games like, "Hey, we can cut this run short it won't matter one bit." But I know the games my mind likes to play and my answer was, "Not today."

Not too long after I turned around to head home, a cicada landed on one of my legs, and I picked him or her up to toss into the air while screaming, "I'm not a tree!" A guy doing some shrub trimming looked up at my outburst and I figured he didn't get it, so I explained that a cicada had landed on me. I smiled, laughed, and continued on.

When I got to the one stoplight on this particular route, and it was red, I tried my best to stand in the shade of the stoplight! That's how hot it was. The last mile was mostly downhill (yeah, I know I said no hills, but I forget they are everywhere), which was really nice, and before I started this one, I polished off the Gatorade and put the bottle in my shorts in my butt. Well, not IN my butt, but you know what I mean--between my shorts and my butt. I do get tired of holding onto the bottle, so it's a nice break to stash it and not have to worry about it. I'm sure it looks rather, ahem, interesting in that particular spot, but I gotta say it stays put there.

When I finished, I was so sweaty that I couldn't even shower right away because I would just keep sweating, so I stripped down and began drinking Endurox R4, and I stuck my head into the open freezer for a minute because I was so flushed. Then I went upstairs and stood in front of a fan while checking my work email. I think I waited about 10 minutes before I got into the shower, and of course, it was the BEST SHOWER EVER.

I felt like I had put out a good effort, and I didn't feel too badly, considering. But let me tell you that an hour later I felt like I needed to LAY DOWN NOW. But I couldn't, because I had work to do, and I got it done, and my body told me it needed steak for dinner, so I had some of that with asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with fontina cheese, and later on a humongous toasted bagel with butter and jam. And 2 beers.

I passed out at 8:30 and slept until 4:30 this morning. That was the best sleep I've had in a few days, and now I'm ready to go for today--a 3400 yard swim and then a 1:10 tempo run later on, and I'll finish up my strength workout. This weekend is a race rehearsal weekend--a 2.4 mile time trial swim on Friday and on Saturday ride the entire Ironman Wisconsin course and run 6 miles off the bike.

I should be in a freaking McDonald's commercial--I'm LOVIN' IT!!!