Tantalus Tuesday

It was a stunning day to be on the mountain today. Blue skies, dry roads. Hot at the bottom but cool at the top... I normally enjoy this mountain but today I just completely felt like I was in love with it. I mean, seriously, look at this view! It crossed my mind more than once today that this sure beats the piss out of riding a trainer inside. #outsideisfree

I decided that I wanted to do my whole normal brick session today, but with Honu in ~10 days I didn't want to rip myself apart or do anything that would require extended recovery time. I do think the next 10 days will be a bit tricky for me. A downfall of mine is that I tend to want to avoid resting... Training less is not appealing to me, nor do I typically welcome it. So the whole recover-going-into-a-race thing is something that would probably be best if guided by a smart coach who knows me well. Given that I don't have one of those right now I'm going to wing it myself and try to not be a moron. I think I succeeded at that today! :)

3 loops up and I did get faster each time, but my effort was always controlled and the fastest one was only 34:45- so not blazing- and a few minutes off what I think I could have done had I opted to really rip it. I couldn't find my HR strap this morning (hate that!) but HR/breathing felt very much in control and it was all good.

Run off the bike same 2 miles up 2 miles down... something changed though b/c I felt WAY better going up today. Got up in 22:10 which was a full 50" faster than I've gone yet this year but it didn't feel labored at all (ok it's straight uphill so it did feel a little labored but not like it could have!)... Turned around and got down in 13:52 (6:56 for both miles) and again it just felt like legs ticking over not digging. So really I was mostly happy not about the splits here but about how it felt. As well as how I felt afterward- way less smashed than I typically am after this brick. #missionaccomplished

I won't do this brick again for a few weeks b/c of Honu... but when I go back to it in June I think I'm going to have to modify it a bit. I feel like after 5x same session I will need to change up the stimulus to force my body to keep adapting... Though I don't know... maybe I'm not done adapting to it yet? Every time I do it I run faster than I did the time before (with less effort!) so maybe there's more to get out of repeating the same session? These are some of the thoughts I'm having anyway.