Removing The Choke-Chain

So today I got to do my first group ride of the year... woohoo! No HR limits- just ride with the group and do what you need to do to hang on. This is the type of training I know... the kind I have done for years... and I like it! I can certainly see how doing it week after week after week all year might just leave you super fatigued and flat, but working these types of efforts in sometimes is fun, motivating, and confidence building.

I rolled up this morning and my friend Mike said something about me being a damn anti-social wench for being MIA so far all year. I took it as a compliment. Maybe you have to know Mike to understand, but yes, welcome back is what he really meant. ;)

So we took off and I was chit chatting with a guy who's about to do his first ironman at St George in 9 weeks... I made the ASSumption that he would be riding nice and steady all day so I figured his wheel would be a good place to stay... but like a mile later we were flying over some rollers, my HR monitor was showing the same numbers as it did last week at the 20K TT... then Spence rolled by and drove the pace faster up the next roller... and my HR came within 1 beat of my max... then Ben kept the pressure on and I was digging and gritting my teeth to hang on and trying not to think about how screwed I was that we were ~20 minutes into this 62 mile ride and I was already working at my 20K TT effort.

The thing was, I didn't feel bad- I felt good- so I went with it... eventually Ben and Spence eased off the gas a bit and we settled in to steady and surprisingly, I felt fantastic. Yay! This was fun. And then it started to rain. First just a drizzle, then a solid pissing rain. Which made the white lines on the road turn into Lines of Death and I just about lost it crossing over one of them once... that was scary. I know how slippery they can be when they're wet but our roads here sometimes have nice shoulders and then sometimes not so we are forced to cross over that Line of Death a lot and it was really scary today. Honestly, I don't know how I kept my bike up that one time- I thought for sure I was going down and it would have hurt b/c we were flying.

Coming home the rain never let up... alternating from pissing to pelting then back to pissing. Potholes were filled with brown water and cars drove right through deep puddles, spraying water on us like Shamu at Sea World. We kept a steady pace but it just felt flat out dangerous to me and I'm glad we made it home without incident. While I love riding with the group, ironically, I think it is more dangerous than when I ride alone. I mean, I had 4 (count 'em, FOUR) close calls today and feel lucky to have made it home without cracking my helmet.

Anyway, part one of my weekend training done. I'm running later this afternoon and then have another 18 miles to get through tomorrow... including a little 10K in the middle of that. Yeah. I'll let you know how that goes. Anyone know how much e21 you can take without an OD?