Disarray

For at least the last month, probably more, my training has been about as unstable as the weather. Every time I think I'm getting back to some semblance of stability a monkey wrench gets thrown into the works and everything grinds to a crawl for a few days. Earlier in the week it was super cold and windy, which made riding fairly uncomfortable. Right now its something like 74F, but tomorrow morning it will be 44. Then you throw into the mix Mardi Gras and stuff and things go from bad to worse. It's frustrating, especially when you've been around the block as many times as I and you tend to start gaining weight about ten minutes after you get off the bike.

Take this week, for example.  On Monday I was off work and the weather was good and I treated myself to the luxury of going out to ride after sunrise and logged 30 miles, which is a lot for a Monday when I would usually be doing a short easy 20-miler. But of course while Tuesday was just Tuesday in most places, it was Fat Tuesday here, so I rode all of 13 miles at a pace too slow to qualify as training and undoubtedly not even enough to burn off the piece of King Cake I had at the Royal Run. The rest of the day involved maybe ten or twelve miles on the commuter and a lot of walking around which resulted in an achy back and hips and feet. Wednesday morning was so cold and windy that I slept in, which brings us to Thursday when I got the only real training ride, however marginal, so far this week. This morning I went out with the Tulane group for the coffee ride and promptly flatted after rolling through a patch of glass on Orleans Avenue.  The streets are pretty much covered with broken glass right now. Not wanting to hold up the ride, I told them to go ahead and I'd meet them on Lakeshore Drive after I'd fixed the flat.  So I roll over to the sidewalk, open my saddle bag, and realize that although I'd re-stocked it with tubes after the training camp flat-fest, I'd apparently forgotten to put any CO2 cartridges in there.  Crap.  So I texted Danielle who was with the group, and cautiously rode the rear flat, leaning heavily on the handlebars, another mile or so to Harrison Avenue where I knew they'd see me on the way back.

Anyway, although the coffee ride is always an easy Zone 2 type of affair, I didn't even get those 25 miles, settling instead for a mere 12. In the last two weeks I've missed four days of riding, which is a lot for me, and the riding I've done has been shorter and less intense than normal as well. The net result is that I feel like a sack of cement. Of course, I can try and make up for some of it this weekend by maybe riding a little harder or a little longer, but it doesn't really work that way. The training disarray of the past couple of weeks translates into a lower level of training capability which basically means that if I try to jump right back into the deep end with two back-to-back days of heavy training I'll probably end up doing more harm than good, requiring more recovery time afterward, thus repeating the cycle of inconsistency.