One Ride too Far

Am I ready to race?  Seems like the season has arrived,  with or without my fitness.  Sunday looks to be the day.  I do think I'm going to skip the dusty masses of the 35+ Cat 4 Beer-drinking-dads herd,  and start the season in a less dusty 45+ open group. 

So my "training" lately has been one hard interval workout a week,  plus a mid week cross hot lap session.  This week was a bump in the number of interval repeats,  and was the first "real" mock race hot laps for our Wednesday "race" day.  Tuesday is interval day,  and this week I got to bump up the number of hill acceleration repeats,  giving me a chance to bump up the number of  the lung busting bastards I get to enjoy.

Hill accelerations.  Whoever dreamed these things up is a genius.  An EVIL genius,  but a genius.  NOTHING could feel SO bad,  and yet not actually kill you.   4-5 Minutes at LT,  then a 40 second,  max,  flat out acceleration at the top of the hill.  Glork. I may well have puked up an entire dead prairie dog on  #5.  Seemed to be a new pile of prairie-dog Sushi on the road,  in a nice,  sun-dried fur crust.  Only saw it on the last round,  so suspect that somewhere along the up and down and up the hill trail I might have retched that up without noticing.

Next day was Cross practice.  We are now into the full blown mock race mode for our mid week gag-fests now. We were in a park with some nice,  deep,  damp grass this week to just to add to the fun.  With a herd of 17 people beating each other up,  it was feeling a LOT like a real race,  just shorter.  Three 10+ minute mini races later,  was starting to feel a bit like that prairie dog on the pavement.

I had also agreed to join some folks after work for a quick mountain bike ride.  Turns out that ride was the one ride too many for me.  Meltdown.  Ugly.  Dead.  Painful.  Hard to describe it.  Usually one just gets tired,  it hurts a lot to go your normal speed,  and you can HTFU and get thru the ride.  Not this one.  Barely able to go uphill,  everything screaming at me.  Let the boys go,  weaved my way slowly up to the loop at Hall Ranch,  then sat down,  whimpered,  and waited for the boys to finish the loop & head down.

Have to surmise that complete meltdown indicated that the bump in intensity for the week was "just about right".    Today,  It's full recovery mode.  Have 2 more easy days to recover for that debut on Sunday,  Time to find a place to curl up & relax.

Am I ready to Race?  Well,  Sunday will tell the tale.  Along with a lot of you out there,  the day of reckoning is nigh.  Time to start the party.