Three hundred twenty-two and a half miles!!! I made it to my goal of 310(+) miles, or 10 miles per day average for March! I didn't think I'd make it. The month started off pretty well, but after the second week, my legs felt like garbage. Just biking the four or five mostly-flat miles to and from work felt awful. Walking up two flights of stairs at work: also awful. I wasn't sleeping well or enough which was probably both a cause and a effect of my legs feeling like trash. And it was all making me more irritable by the day.
I finally waved a white flag of surrender/defeat on the 24th and just decided rest was more important than meeting my goal. (I also realized that my goal was a bit ridiculous. I only biked 83 miles in February. Trying to do nearly 400% more mileage in March was probably 400% overambitious and possibly downright stupid. Ooh, but didn't I say last time, dream big? Lol, dammit.) I had four days off work, which meant four days I didn't have to bike at all. I went out for a ride on the third day in a half-hearted attempt to, well, see if I couldn't salvage my goal. I mean, I only needed to bike 90 miles in 6 days. It could happen...
That day I did my longest ride ever: exactly 50 miles. I didn't intend to go that far, but I guess my legs appreciated the two days of rest, the weather was cooperative, and things felt good so I went for it. The next day, my legs felt like crap again, lol, but I was back on track to meet my goal! Shut up legs, I've got miles to crush!
Today I had just 6.5 miles to go, and rather unenthusiastically headed outside. The sun made an appearance, but it was Windy. As. Fuck. I thought maybe I'd loop Lake Monona (well over 6.5 miles), but that wind...oooh, that wind was making think I'd just get that 6.5 miles and be DONE.
I did say overambitious and possibly downright stupid, right? So 18.5 miles later, I called it quits for the month with a total of 322.5 miles. And I looped the lake at a faster pace than is typical for me. (I'm thinking I want to try to work on speed a bit. Surely I can do better than 13.5 mph average? Today's trip was 14.2 mph.)
My legs still feel like garbage, but whatever.
And then tonight, I signed up for a duathlon. Because clearly, I hate my legs.
It's four weeks away, and I'm totally freaking out about this (OMG, what have I signed up for?!?!?) It's 3 miles run, 20 miles bike, 2 (more, WTF) miles run. I'm not terribly concerned with the biking. Or the running. It's just the two (three? seriously, WTF, this sounds like a wannabe triathlon, there's three parts!) things combined that make me nervous. I anticipate it'll take me 2.5-3 hours to finish. I don't care about how long it takes, really. I just want it to not feel awful.
I'm thinking my plan for the next four weeks will be mostly focused on trying to convince myself: you got this. And: SLEEPING. I usually get 6-7 hours of sleep a night, which is hello, not enough. At all. Getting a solid 8-9 hours of sleep, regularly, would probably do me more good than any combination of biking and running workouts.
Here's to sleep!!!!
Also, thanks, legs, for putting up with all that. I owe you a day off ;)
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