...We all fall short sometimes.
I'm trying to stay positive. I'm going to narrate the workout again. I ended up taking the ride earlier rather than later because I knew it would weigh heavy on my mind all day if I left it til the afternoon, so I hopped on the trainer not too long after breakfast. Yesterday, I had figured breaking up the set with 2 minutes of rest between efforts and only aiming for 3 instead of 5 rounds would change things, but apparently not. Just as a reminder, the rounds were at base +1 gearing, 5 minutes at 80-85 rpm, 5 minutes at 85-90 rpm, 5 minutes at 90-95 rpm continuous. I got through the first 15 minutes interval and it was brutal as to be expected and I just caved on the second one within the first five minutes. I told myself I wasn't allowed to quit on it, so I took some extra rest and went again. I made it through the first five minutes, quit within the first 2 minutes of the 85-90 rpm interval. And again, I told myself I wasn't gonna let that stand. So I went again. Same thing, 6 minutes in and my brain was out.
At this point I thought, okay maybe we need a change of plans. I can get through the first bit. Let's break the rest of it up too. So I tried to do just a single 5 minute interval at 85-90 rpm. Failed two minutes in on my first try. Reset. Tried again and made it. It wasn't comfortable, but I made it. So I thought okay, same thing, 90-95 rpm. Broke on the first one. Reset. Tried again. Hit it on the second try, imperfectly so far as staying in zone went, but I made it. On that last one, I really tried to just sink my teeth into how much it hurt instead of hiding from it. I basically found the tempo and closed my eyes and buried myself into that feeling and somehow I got through those five minutes. At this point, I was about 80 minutes in and I thought about finishing out with sprints but honestly I couldn't bring myself to do it after trying and failing with the main set bunch of times so I just warmed down and called it a day.
I'm starting to realize that this set is genuinely really hard. I've never been great at maintaining effort on long sets and that's really what this comes down to. Once again I find myself in the position of having to re-visit what I need to do in order to accomplish this. I don't want to spend more workouts struggling through things like this and losing structure when I fail out of the set because that doesn't help me build the kind of specific fitness I'm trying to get. So I think the next time I ride on the trainer, the target set will be the same warm up as today (20 minutes instead of 15), one round of 5/5/5 like I did today, then three more rounds following the same pattern but at 3/3/3, 2/2/2, and 1/1/1 with 2 minutes between each round. If I make it that far and I'm feeling okay, I want to take an extra 2 minutes of rest and hit the 5/5/5 broken like I did today to finish out (with 2 minute rests between each 5 minute segment?). Maybe tack on a single set of six sprints. Even looking at that, it sounds ambitious, but that's how I like to plan workouts. Aim high, then every once in a while I get to surprise myself. I'm also realizing that it's gonna take me a long time to work up to being able to do this right again. But that's okay, I'm willing to be patient and put my head down and work to get there.
I have a profoundly new appreciation for hard I was pushed the last time I did this. Henry honestly put the team on his back because I can't work myself that hard without him. It's incredible what that kind of presence does for your ability to look at pain straight in the eye and say I won't let this beat me. It's crazy. I can't wait to have him around full time to push me. It'll be brutal but it'll make me so much better.
In the meantime, I have a chance to work on being mentally tough on my own and not letting fear hold me back. I'm going to get there, if nothing else today showed me that even when I'm failing I still know how to be tenacious and get back up and get after it. I didn't do what I set out to do but I didn't let myself off the hook for it either. I didn't run, I didn't hide, I adjusted and I tried again and again until I reached a point that I was somewhat satisfied with. I'm going to get there. It's gonna take time but I'm going to get there.
The only other comment I have to make is that I'm also realizing that I have to reassess how I judge my running and biking fitness. I'm good about being more reasonable when I'm judging swim fitness because I've been doing it long enough to know that it takes a huge amount of work to make even the slightest bit of progress. I try to be at my best every single day, but when I have a fluke awesome day, I'm good at realizing that more likely than not it's a fluke and I don't expect to be that awesome every day that follows. Sometimes I'm wrong and I do genuinely get better. But sometimes I'm right too, and it helps keep my head in check.
With running and biking, I have a tendency of expecting every day to be like my best days. For some reason (probably because I'm still new), I see that as the bar, and there are some ways in which that helps push me, but there are many more ways in which it probably holds me back. It's important to know where I'm really at physically in order to tune the training to a reasonable level. At some point, continuously overextending is just not going to benefit my fitness. I'm starting to realize that the one Sunday when I hit this workout was probably a fluke day in which my legs probably far out-performed what they're genuinely capable of. The end goal of course is to be able to do this on any normal day, but I'm going to have to work up to it at a reasonable rate instead of just diving in and thinking that I can mentally muscle my way through it. That's not how fitness works. You can't hide shortage of fitness by trying harder, you have to do the work to build it up to that point. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be patient and trust in the work and I'm gonna get there.
Today's Workout: Trainer ride, 90 mins
Summary: Imperfect summary but this is functionally what happened
- WU:
- 10 mins easy
- 8 x :30/:30 spin ups
- 2 mins easy
- Main Set: pretty arbitrary rest breaks (2-5 minutes) between rounds/sets and some failed attempts thrown in there
- 5/5/5 @ 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm (base +1)
- 4 x 5, 2 @ 80-85 rpm, 1 @ 85-90 rpm, 1 @ 90-95 rpm (base +1)
- WD: ~10 mins easy
- Totals: 20.48 mi, 1:30:38, 13.6 mph average
Hit Rate: 54/58 (93.1%)
Let's do the rest of this Friday. (:
Much love,
Jess
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