big gear

My head's doing just fine, and I have decided to permanently wear a helmet. Just in case. I seem to have a gravitational pull to my noggin and and feel like I am quickly becoming the Pat LaFontaine of triathlon.

Not to worry, I have now memorized how to spell world backwards.

Monday I had my first big gear ride on tap. The vacation is over, the four weeks I spent happily spinning around are gone. This week brings work and progression. At last!

It was a two hour ride with big watts, big gears and big hills, and I felt like I was in heaven. It wasn't the kind of hard where you throw up in your mouth, but the kind of hard that makes you relax into the effort, ride above the waves of difficulty, sit with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other who tells you to just downshift it'd be so much easier.

I'm not here for easy devil I tell him I am here for a very specific reason. I have not banished wheat and white flour and all things sugary to downshift. I have not completely committed myself to this coach and this team and this program to take the easy way out.

I'm here for all of it. The good, the hard, the days where I do puke in my mouth and take a ride through the five corners of hell in the hurt box with the wizard. Yesterday I was given a glimpse of what's to come from Coach Jesse. He ran through all of my performance indicators and calculated everything out to what he knows can be my finishing time for Clearwater.

Holy Shit. I thought. I wanted to say you think I can do that? But one thing is clear on this team, there is no guesswork. What's laid out is what is calculateable (my own invented word). He compiled my test results with my current body composition with where we are to be headed by what day and what time...... and that's what comes up.

Oh Lord. I thought. Tell me what to do.

My job is to execute each and every workout as it is written. My job is to communicate with my coach. My job is to hold up my end of the bargain with nutrition as it's also prescribed. If I do this work this will be the end result.

I think that's true for many things. It's not like we go out and train at a 9 minute E paced mile for X months and expect to run an 18 minute 5K. Over time and through thoughtful progressive training you drop that E pace and therefore drop the subsequent other times. You add in the hard work when it is supposed to be added in and you never cheat on your recovery days.

I have never seen an athlete throw in an extra 6 min mile repeat. But I have seen too many athletes throw in an extra easy hour here and there.

Never cheat on your recovery days. Trust your plan. Trust the person who writes it and give them the data they need to trust you are executing it.

The execute it.

Get out of your head. I'm the type of athlete who rides on feeling. Butterflies in my stomach? I will ride them through it. When I try to get cerebral and assign words and themes to each part of my race I don't' do so well. I am not a thinker. I am a mover in instincter. I'm in my head all the time give me the chance to race from my gut and from my heart.

When I can do that, I succeed each and every time. I've gotten away from that in recent years trying to convert to what I thought was a more focused athlete.

Yesterday while I cycled through the 10 minute intervals of big gear I found the feeling again. The feeling of hard. The quiet place within my mind that I can silence with one breath if it starts to try to take me down.

You can't take me down I remind it. I'm here for the long haul.

When I finished my 2 hour effort my legs ached that familiar good old hard work ache. I swung my leg over my handlebars to dismount and laughed. There it is. That feeling of work. That feeling of hard. That feeling of getting stronger.

We've got plenty of time.