When You Have a Truly Suck-A-Rific Ride and Other Thoughts

Oh, they look super cute--don't they. Soft. Snugly. Incapable of causing major parental distress.

You'd never guess how *evil* they can be, though. The baby girl less so than the baby girl dog...

On Wednesday the baby girl found the chocolate Easter eggs and jellybeans I had hidden (obviously not well) and brought them down to her level to snack on a few. And she left them there--on her level. Enter Hazel, the *evil* girl puppy. She found those chocolate eggs and jellybeans. And she snacked on a few.
Or, more accurately, she snacked on them all.

When Hazel walked into the kitchen, chocolate covering her lips and her belly swollen 10x its normal size, I knew something was awry. When she farted a big ass chocolate Easter egg fart I knew I was in serious trouble.

A good dog mommy would rush her young chocolate-eating pup to the vet. But I didn't. I tried to assess the damage. How much had she had? The remaining chocolate eggs strewn across the floor indicated consumption along the lines of a quarter bag. All of the jellybeans were gone. I would risk it. Have I mentioned that it is $1000 bucks just to enter the emergency pet clinic? (I know I know... should have sent her for a stomach pump....)
Anyway.
I also decided against inducing vomiting with Hydrogen Peroxide, as I was not positive when she had downed the chocolate. Longer than two hours and it would already be in her small intestine. 

The shitting/barking/pissing extravaganza began a few hours later, when it was time for me to go to bed. She would bark, then shit out crushed pink foil and chocolate smelling diarrhea. The she would bark, and then piss everywhere. Then she would bark, and then barf, a special chocolaty vomit that really made me need to hurl myself. In the end Andy and I spent a good chunk of the night up, comforting her and cleaning. By the morning the worst of it was over. I'd like to say she has learned her lesson, but, ummm, she is a Yellow Lab. If I put chocolate eggs in front of her snout right now, she would sniff them and smile her lab smile and say, Yummm, chocolate eggs! Gimme!


Now you might ask, what does this have to do with the super sucky ride to which you refer in your blog title?

Well, I will tell you. I had a 4 hour 30 minute ride scheduled for yesterday, the day following the Easter Egg shit/piss/vomit celebration.

I awoke groggy and exhausted, and really, really not in the mood to battle the cold and wind for that long on my bike. I debated whether to mess with the schedule and move the ride. But it wasn't really an option. Today, Good Friday, the kids are home. Saturday and Sunday, a day many athletes use to get in the long ride, is not a good option for the Mommy athlete of kids in elementary school--kids who have soccer, swimming, karate, etc. slated for weekend days. Plus, Sunday is Easter. I will have a hard enough time fitting in the assigned long run that day, let alone an additional long ride.

So I climbed on my bike, and hoped for the best. I will add here that I had been tired even leading up to the Hazel debacle of the night before. I'm sure if I had one of those little meters that measure readiness to train it would have flashed RED--DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WORK OUT TODAY, DUMBASS! at me. But I don't have one of those. There is a reason for that. ;)

I have been rather obsessed with my bike volume lately. There is a reason for that--namely that I attribute my past lack of run prowess off the bike in IM to my not significant enough bike volume leading up to my IM races. Kurt and I have discussed this. He does not buy into my thinking. He has other theories (having to do with life stresses leading up to my races and problems in my noggin), but I remain obsessed with bike volume, which is concrete enough for me to actually do something about. For this reason, if he assigns a bike, you can be damn sure I will do it, and maybe do a little *more* then he has asked. (sort of piece of contention here, I will add....)

Anyway. I would be damned if I didn't get the all important long ride in, ready or not.

I started off fine enough. It was cold, in the upper forties, and steely gray outside. There was a strong, bitter wind blasting from the north/northwest. Because I live west of Boston, I always must start my rides going west, south or north. East has me heading into the city, which is, as you might imagine, is not my favorite place to ride. I decided to start by going south/south west. I would ease into the ride and then when I had to head north I would tackle that wind and put out bigger watts. Because the wind wasn't right in my face for the first hour I felt okay. It wasn't soooo cold. It wasn't soooo hard. 

Then I started do some out and backs (south, turn, north, turn south etc) on long streets I generally like, and got a taste of that. fucking. wind. 


My average pace dropped. My legs felt that icky hot burn--which is something you never ever want to feel just an hour into a long ride. And my attitude started to drop, as well as my average watt ouput.


The mental demons started to attack. 

Why do I do this? I hate this. Why am I out here freezing my ass off? I'm going home. Fuck this.

Then. 

Buck up, sister. If you can't even do a 75 mile ride how the hell do you expect to race well at IMLP? Jesus, Mary! Push the pedals a bit! What the hell is wrong with you?

Then. 

OMG. I just don't feel right. I need to go in. Do I need to eat? When did I last eat? 

Then. 

Mary, just suck it up for crying out loud! This is not some tragedy! You are fine. Just chill out, start working, and before you know it will be over.

Then. 

Okay. My average watts have dropped by 5 watts in just the last 15 minutes. I'm fucked. I'm never going to be able to stay out here fr 4.5 hours.  MARY! If you were one of your athletes, you'd tell yourself to go in and call it a day!

on and on and on and on and on and on....

At 3.5 hours I had a nice little cry while I ate a banana nut Lara bar. (I love those things, though it didn't really help me much yesterday, I admit.) I allowed myself a full-fledged pity party. A guy walked by with his dog and looked at my quizzically as I cried and ate. I pasted on a smile. Just havin' some lunch! I said, suppressing a sob.

Then I got on that damn bike and finished the ride. 

Which I did finish. 4 hours, 30 minutes and 8 seconds of reprimanding myself for not feeling good, for not riding well, for not being strong enough...

A ride like that can have differing, lingering effects. Andy and Ange, bearing witness to my self-pitying sorrow following the ride, reminded me that of course it is hard sometimes; that I fought through it; that I was stronger for gutting it out; that my paltry watt output and my even more paltry speed on this ride did not mean I would take 10 hours to finish the bike at IMLP. (thanks, guys...weep!)  And Kurt reminded me that every year this time I bitch about the wind and lament about my lame speed and durability. He even brought up a workout report from last year in which I whined about being slow slow slow and tireeddddd....


But still. A ride like that is tough. It can really mess with your confidence if you let it. Is this what I am? Am I a woman who whimpers and cries in the face of fatigue?  


Well yes. I guess I am! But a ride like this is still necessary every once in awhile. It reminds me that I need to take care of myself--that if I deny myself enough sleep night after night I will not be able to perform when I need to--that if I I always do more than my coach tells me to do, and never allow myself to listen to my body when it screams at me to rest, I will eventually and inevitably break down.


I pine to be superhuman. I get down on myself when it seems that the rest of the world is able to put in xxx hours of bike volume a week and I break down long before that. 


I write this all out because I know many of you suffer the same disappointment. How is it that Super Woman Sally can bike 20 hours in a week and come out ready to have a big ass party, while when I try that shit I wind up face down on my pillow sick as dog, completely wiped out and practically in a coma?  It is so freaking HARD to let your body do only what your body can do... and not try to squeeze more out of it because you know you "need" those hours to be at the top of this game.
It really is. 


Sometimes it's hard to figure out what fight to fight...
Is it fighting through the exhaustion that makes you stronger?
Is it fighting through the disappointment that you can't ride all day and night without completely breaking down that makes you a better athlete?


I slept last night. Ten hours. And today I will just swim a bit. And I will only do what Kurt has assigned me to do on Saturday and Sunday, and no more. 
In the end it's likely both fights that need to be fought. I am a fighter--and I am also human.
Probably, just like you.
(Even though I am pissed at you if you can put in more time without falling apart.. ;)


Time to go eat one of the cake balls Jordan and Lara made this morning.
I need to get to them before Hazel does.