It seemed like I did NOTHING but sleep, eat and stretch.
I'm new to all of this endurance sports stuff and each experience is a huge learning experience. While I've trained for three bike events, this was the one I trained for the best. As such, the taper was painful and unexpected. I hurt from head to toe for 10 days. I'm so glad that's done.
I haven't yet gotten on the scale since last weekend, and I'm not looking forward to the message reading:
That said, I still managed to compile 506 total miles, but just 35 miles running. I didn't want to risk a stupid injury running with a bike race coming up. In April, I had my two best bike rides ever. One was a solo 75 mile ride where I averaged 20.7 mph, even with traffic lights and other junk. The second was Saturday's race. The average speed wasn't that great, especially for riding in a group, 22 mph, but I had POWER that I never felt before. That was exciting.
I won't be training for anything until mid-August, so I plan on doing some great base building over the next three months. Diet, body composition, some swimming and so on. It is so weird that losing weight while training for a big event isn't easy. I did manage to drop about 10 pounds from the beginning of February until, well, just before the tapering. While I had a great race Saturday, you can read about it here if you missed it, I feel guilty. I like piling up miles and doing lots of pushups and pullups and so on. The past two weeks of the taper were so easy, so sedentary, I just feel ... ick.
I'll be making up for that in May. Here's my list of things to do for the month:
- 150 Miles Running: Feed the Beast To join me in the challenge, held on daily mile, click here.
- Drop 15 pounds (Will weigh in on 5/1)
- Climb Mt. Wrightson (9,800 ft. mountain that dominates the local landscape...never climbed it)
- Complete the inaugural Nogales Bicycle Classic, finish in under 2:45
- 6500 pushups
- 1300 pullups
- Daily Ab Exercise (6 days a week)
Anyhow, I hope those of you that are healthy, stay so, and those that are nursing injuries recover quickly. That said, I have this to say: May, bring it!
That's a serious list of physical goals for the month. Do you have a job? :)
ReplyDeleteI do wonder about your goal of losing 15 lbs. at the same time of trying to do all this stuff. Maybe some of your power on Saturday was due to not restricting food over the taper period?
I understand the desire to continue losing weight at the pace you've maintained (I've been very heavy in the past and am still working on getting down to my target weight - interrupted by a couple of pregnancies), but too much too soon can affect performance.
Anyway, good work on Saturday and good luck going forward!
Annie:
ReplyDeleteI have two jobs!
I understand what you're saying about the weight loss and exercise. I think I can do it because, #1, I'm sure I'm +5 due to the tapering, and #2, the running will be low intensity. As for the pushups and pullups, those are my normal routine actually.
If push came to shove, I'd sacrifice the weight-loss in favor of eating more to run better. Hopefully I can have my cake and eat it too. :D