Friday, April 13, 2007

Fear and Loathing in April

I'm just going to start this off by saying this is bullshit, the weather specifically. At the end of summer I long for the cooler days where the highs are in the 50's, the air is crisp and I know 'cross season is just around the corner. But come on, it's April! One day it's 80 and then in the 40's and 50's for days on end.

Tomorrow is my first race of the season up in good ol' PA. Most people I know and will be racing against tomorrow already have a couple races in their legs. The only thing in my legs are lactic acid and chocolate covered blueberries from Trader Joe's. I put off the start to my road season for several reasons, first of which was after last year's dismal start due to less than optimal fitness, I was left suffering the rest of the season never really finding that afore mentioned fitness. Secondly, I started racing last year in mid-March at the most poorly organized race where my warm-up consisted of standing in a line 150 people deep at 7:30 in the morning in sub-freezing temps waiting to get signed in. Then running to get my shit together and to the start line, where my race was promptly over a lap and a half later. That day pretty much set the tone for the rest of my season and I swore it wouldn't again happen this year.

So why do I find myself more nervous the night before a race than I have been in probably more than 10 years? Because tomorrow isn't shaping up weather wise to be any better than a year and 1 month ago and the race is organized by the same promoter, that's why. Deja Vu? My fitness has already been a roller coaster ride, my Training Stress Balance score in CyclingPeaks has been negative since March 27th and I almost passed out on the rollers last night trying to do some threshold intervals. The power was there but the heartrate told me I was sprinting up the Manayunk wall, something wasn't jiving and it wasn't simply cardiac drift.

On the bright side, today is the day Gina and I met, well not officially the day, we met in July, but it was Friday the 13th. Who says everything bad happens on Friday the 13th?
Things are changing here as well, the next few months should be interesting.

2 comments:

Chris Mayhew said...

That's just about the edge of how long I'd push someone with negative TSB. How negative are we talking?

You got a fan for those rollers?

Chris H said...

I use a fan but I should have had a window open for some fresh air flow. I also fogot to turn the thermostat down so I think the heat was kicking on as well.