The lone cyclist

Something I came to terms with a few years ago was making a decision between training and riding, and when it comes down to it, it's a decision I've continued to have to make on a very frequent basis.  When I started working with my coach, Joanna Zeiger (racereadycoaching.com), the way I approached cycling workouts didn't just change--it was upended, torn apart, and put back together again all over the course of that first year that she coached me.  I got a power meter, and I struggled with it.  At first, I struggled to even grasp what I was supposed to be accomplishing with the numbers that seemed to be only tangentially related to what I thought was going on with me on the bike.

Joanna was very patient with me, and took me through several of my power files over time, and explained what the issues were.  In retrospect, it really wasn't surprising.  Cycling, in general, does not lend itself to encourage you to do what you should actually do to get better.  When you ride in a group, you really have no control of what kind of effort level you're putting into the pedals, and more than likely, you wind up riding too hard on uphills, and way too easy when sitting in the draft zone of even a single cyclist.  Your workout tends to look like a mess of random garbage that doesn't really train your muscles or the energy systems that supply them in order to make you go faster. Over the course of years, I've discovered that most cyclists tend to double, if not triple, their power output when going up a small hill.  As an example--you're pedaling along at something close to your long distance aerobic pace--let's say 150 watts, and when you reach a hill, you feel the need to maintain your speed, and testosterone kicks in, because who wants to be the one to slow up the pack going up a hill?  It's not uncommon for me to sit in the back of the pack when this occurs and watch how I have to break 300 watts and approach 400 watts or even more just to stay on someone's wheel. So, you've gone from something you can probably maintain for 5 or 6 hours, to something you wouldn't be able to maintain for 5 or 6 minutes, all based on the randomness of the road.  There simply isn't another sport that this happens in.

An example of a pretty decent power file, with a 20 minute long interval in the middle of it

I don't crank through workouts that way anymore--if I ride with a group, which is rare, I tend to hang in the back, and drop off the pack going up a hill.  I'll catch them on the downhill or a flat that follows.  When I do ride with a group, it's usually for a workout that I'm not trying to accomplish something specific, or it's for a portion of the workout that my effort level can change--the warm-up is usually an ok place/time for me to do that.  The simple fact of the matter is that I watched myself take an hour and a half off of my ironman bike split when I trained correctly, and that's what I was after all along.  I've found that most people in triathlon don't actually want to ride like that--they're there for the group ride--and to have fun, which is perfectly ok.  I just decided a long time ago that triathlon was about setting and achieving goals for me, and doing what I need to do to make that happen.  So I wind up riding alone--a lot.  Occasionally, someone rides with me, and does one of my workouts with me, but it never seems to stick--while I can guess as to the reasons why, I don't actually know in a lot of cases, because we're all out there for a different reason.

So, it's time for me to get out of my head and get on my bike, for a long ride with some long intervals at half-iron pace.  Ride on and be safe everyone!

 

"Hi, my name's Drew and I'm a recovering swimmer from the '90s"

I grew up in the age of "You will swim 17,000 meters a day, and if you don't get good from it, that's your problem."  This has left a lasting impression on my life that is flawed to its very core. On one hand, the work ethic that swimming taught me was unparalleled to anything I probably could have gotten as a child, and that's saying a lot, given that I grew up in a military household where sitting around and relaxing was viewed as a cardinal sin.  On the other hand, it mistakenly taught me that more is always better, and it has taken me decades to unlearn, and something that I still struggle with on a daily basis.

I was lucky going through school because it was easy for me--people used to get really pissed at me when I explained to them that the amount of time I spent studying for exams was on the order of minutes, as opposed to hours or days in some cases.  It was simply very straightforward for me to identify what I didn't know, review that, and be done with it. My test scores, grades, and acheivements all reflected that, and I carried this into my professional life.  The only difference was that time became measured in hours worked, rather than in tasks accomplished, and I set out at a very early time in my career to fill my days with the most productive time I could, rarely exceeding a 40 hour workweek and often outperforming my peers in the process of doing so.  I'm only saying this to point out that somehow I was lucky in not letting the lessons that were ingrained in me as a swimmer carry through to my career.

I am, however, extraordinarily hard on myself in my activities outside of work.  Joanna, my triathlon coach, has pointed this out to me, and she has been dead on.  If I am not exceeding the bounds of reality of what my body can handle, I am not happy with the results of my workouts.  If I am not constantly achieving new PRs, I am not satisfied with my race results.  If I'm not doing all of this while I'm holding down a job as an aerospace engineer, where I am routinely faced with the realities of a contracting industry laying off workers left and right, then I have failed.

I think that the lesson that I had to learn, and still have more to learn about, is that sometimes non-perfection is good enough.  Beating myself up for ending my workout yesterday after a wasp sting is not productive, and given the black-and-blue mark I have on it today, I probably didn't need to finish my hard intervals while riding home.

I'm not going to the Olympics, and given that I'm about 3 hours out of contention for a Kona slot, I'm not going there either.  The daily struggles that I have with performance have to be more about enjoying the process, rather than focusing on the result, and I think I've lost touch with a lot of that--so I was all too happy this morning when a brief bout of runner's high kicked in during my 10 miler, and I could remember what it's all about.

It's time to just enjoy the day.