Weakness

S - 11,600 yards
B - 213.2 miles
R - 58.9 miles

Time - 22.10 hours

I've decided that when it comes to training I can be a total b*tch.  Yea, I said it.  Sometimes I'm not afraid to admit self-weakness to myself (wait...that sounds weird), but sometimes I am.  This is not one of those times.  These past seven days represented two distinct forces warring for my training soul.  Monday through Friday contained (as far as I can remember; I could be wrong) amazing, spectacular weather.  I rode in short sleeves and bibs for the most part.  I got in tons of volume (Monday-Friday contained roughly 17 hours) and nailed one bike workout (I don't want to talk about the other one...) and even managed to get in some decent swimming at 6am on Tuesday and Thursday!

Talk about a high.  Endorphin high that is.  Then comes Saturday morning.  It's cold.  It's rainy.  In short, it's a miserable day for being outside.  Unfortunately for me, this weekend was also supposed to be a very important weekend as far as training goes.  Saturday was scheduled to contain a short-term anaerobic power test within a 3 hour ride and Sunday was an aerobic, 30 minute time trial power test within another 3 hour ride.  Long story short, neither of them happened.  To get in 17 hours during the week (what most would consider a big volume week during the summer) and only get in ~5 hours on the weekend is sad.

It was made even more sad because it was very blatantly reinforced of how big of a wuss I can be on Saturday evening.  Saturday morning Ashley, Scott, Jenny and I met at Inside Out Sports in an attempt to head out and do Spencer/Cramer (4/5 ICE Racing team members).  The only person that rode to the store was Jenny as Ashley, Scott and I all drove.  So she had already showed up the guys before we even rolled out, which is always embarrassing.  After riding for about 15 minutes I said "Guys, I don't think I can do this.  My hands and feet are already soaked and they're not going to dry off so I feel like this is a little unsafe." This wasn't really a cop out as even at ~45 degrees you stand a strong chance of developing hypothermia if you're wet.  I wasn't lying.  I was already freezing.  We turned around and rode back to the store, where Jenny RODE home and Ashley, Scott and I DROVE to Scott's house to get on the indoor bikes for a little while.

I could only manage ~1hr or so on the rollers; Scott lasted a little bit longer.  Later in the afternoon I went to swim at the Dowd (which sucked, but luckily not because I don't like swimming; that pool just sucks) before heading over to Jenny's house to help her with her bike fit.  We were going to take some video to send to Brian to get a second opinion (as a side note I would like to post some fit videos on the future to critique some common triathlete problems and mis-perceptions...but that's another week).  Before beginning, Jenny cheerfully informed me that she got in another 1.5hrs on the trainer after getting home to get in her whole workout (as written by Brian).  Needless to say, I felt like a big beyotch.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, girls are WAY tougher than guys.  In just about every way possible, they make us look like silly b*tches.

On the whole, it wasn't really that bad of a week.  While it doesn't quite compare to last week in terms of bike volume I'm still pretty consistent.  My aerobic engine is starting to feel pretty beastly these days.  I may not have a ton of top end power/pace but I can plug away at a fairly quick rate for quite a long time.  I'm certainly at a better spot than I was this time last year and it's only going to get better from this point...

This Friday I head to Tucson, which I'm exceptionally excited about.  I get to spend time with the Girl, I get to finally meet my coach (in person, despite having emailed more with him this past year than anyone else), I get to climb Mt Lemmon, be the first in my family to go to Arizona (despite being an above average traveled family, we never really went west after coming to America way back in the olden days), and I'm sure many other things that have yet to even come to mind!  I leave you with a couple of awesome songs from one of the best moves and soundtracks to hit video in 2012: Drive.

Enjoy!