Miserable 64 Miles on Comet

You know those workouts where nothing works out? I had under-ass blisters from running in my bike shorts yesterday. My sunglasses wouldn't un-fog. It was so humid the sweat wouldn't evaporate. My power meter didn't work. And on and on...

I tried to hang with Super Paul for a while but the leg sticks decided they had other plans. A little after the big tunnel I called Paul, turned around and slunk back to the car. I hated that ride back. Once I exploded there was nothing in the tank. Heart rate sank to 120's. Mind went into negative mode. And then, after two solid weeks of Comet workouts with nobody for miles, mass crowds coming at me. "I'm retarded," I wanted to tell every one of them. I hate those tuck-your-tail rides back to the car. Miles tick by sooooo sloooooowwwwwwllllly.

In the end the result wasn't as horrible as I felt it would be. 63 miles in 3hr13min. Not quite 20 mph but not too far off of it. The early push to keep up with Paul and the late I'm-almost-there push upped the avg pace from the middle doldrums. I haven't had much of any long saddle time lately so a bridge distance like 60 miles is probably just about right. But I definitely let my emotional side get the better of me... gotta work on that.

The main culprit wasn't the under-ass blisters. No, it was the pop that comes with two solid weeks of working out, rarely backing off and always rationalizing it somehow in the post-game analysis. Well, this is what I get. Pop. I'm toast.

Probably not a bad thing either. I needed to jump start things. I turned around today to do some damage control. Normally I would've just gutted it out. But this year I don't want to pop and crumble. Just pop. So a full recovery day tomorrow and maybe a full recovery day Monday. Then if I'm not feeling it, a recovery week. I've had enough people tell me that they do two weeks on hard and one week off easy that I need to give it a shot. Only problem is that I haven't ever done a true recovery week. I've given it some lip service. I've probably even tried it. But I need to do it this time, get recovered and then get back to the quality stuff.

Many thanks to Paul for letting me tag along. As I arrived at the start of the Comet at 5:50am I saw Paul with a headlamp finishing a quick pre-run. Paul's incredibly strong. It's good for me to ride with him and to try to keep up. I just hope that my disappearance off the back-end didn't cause him any concern or otherwise disrupt his workout.