Just Riding.

I didn't go to Wichita.  The idea of driving 6 hours and hauling my kids and wife to do a 75 minute crit wasn't as appealing as it once was.   Instead, Sunday was spent pulling a trailer for 4 hours, eating brownies and blueberry pie at the filling station and brunch at McCoy's.

This morning I got up early and road for 20 minutes.  It is hard to strap shoes and helmet on to ride that early, knowing its going to be as hard as its going to be so early.  I wanted to jack my heart rate up really high, as high as it can go.   Its hard to do that with a trailer.  For one, the max speed is 25mph before it gets a little wobbly and for two, there's something about speed that makes my heart beat.  If I'm doing 40mph and pushing 450 watts, my hr will be 25 more than if I am doing 20mph pushing 450 pulling a trailer.

At this point in my fitness, there's usually two limiters to my performance.   1 is muscle and the other is hr.  I'm putting together the blood/hr/air into one limiter.

Some days I can go all day with good muscles and good air, but if I accelerate hard, at race speed, one or the other puts me down.  Either I run out of oxygen, or my muscles seize up and feel tired .

Both these limiters usually go by the food I eat, the weather, the hydration, the energy, the focus, the rest.

If I road hard the night before and get up early and ride again without much water/food/rest, you can bet my legs will feel super sore, no watts, and my hr will not want to go anywhere.  On some rides, my legs are so tired that I can't even work them hard enough to get my heart rate in to zone 4.  I've even done a few races where I didn't even get to zone 5. 

Then there was the LOOP Race.  I spent the whole race around 4 and 5.  I had 3 days of low riding before and felt really rested.  I'm no doctor, but that's what I wanted from a race, to work my legs hard.