This afternoon I took part in the Israel Start-Up Nation Medical Aid Ride. The purpose behind this ride is a good one:
I confess to having an ulterior motive to attending also – this ride being 40km, it would take over my 100km weekly riding goal. And if I were to head out tomorrow on the roads rather than the turbo, I would therefore have met my goal for the week.
However, I don’t think I am going to go out on the roads tomorrow. Even though there have been some lifted restrictions on exercise here in the UK, I’ve been hearing several horror stories about corona from family members and if I can avoid it, I better had.
Given what I’ve heard lately – including a 28 year old dying from it – I’m not sure if I got lucky, or never had it. Either way, I don’t want to risk it.
Sometimes I get on the bike and I’m feeling great, then I set off, and I immediately feel terrible.
Other times I feel terrible, force myself on the bike, and then have an amazing session.
And then there’s the worse of all worlds: feeling bad, and having a bad session. Today was one of those.
I’ve had a fairly crappy week off the bike in terms of some behind the scenes business related stuff blowing up on me. You may have noticed this site was offline for about an hour this morning. Long story short, the system that runs all my web sites died on Tuesday, and so every night this week, along with all morning today has been spent hastily trying to find a fix.
It’s been mucking up my sleep, I am that stressed out.
Needless to say, it’s not helping my fitness.
My main aim for this ride – given that it was covering (nearly) all the London map, was to put in a good stint on Box Hill.
That was it.
I had planned to go steady on Leith Hill, pace myself as best I could but leave something in the tank to be able to do a sub 10 minute effort up Box.
Well, I definitely left under performed on Leith Hill.
It didn’t feel that bad, but oh my days, when I looked on Strava after the fact, I thought I’d had an absolute shocker:
Well, I missed the PR badge and thought I’d got third – as per the red ball. That red ball indicates the “category” of climb. Whoops.
Anyway, in hindsight it wasn’t so bad. 16:51 is better than 19:43 😀
I decided to ease off the gas considerably on the way down. Partly this was to “save myself” for Box Hill, but partly because I seemed to have all manner of pain developing in my back.
I don’t know if this is just old age, or bad posture, or what. But on climbs, I seem to get a bad back. What the hell?
As we came down Lieth Hill it hit me that the route we were following would mean we wouldn’t hit the KOM marker for Box Hill.
Total fail.
This totally sapped my motivation, which was already lacking after Leith Hill.
The ride leaders had been stating pretty much from the off that we would “group ride” to 33km, then race to the line. In other words, from the bottom of Box Hill to the start / finish line of London, we’d be racing.
Only, many, many people did not ride in the group on this one. Even from the off, a sizable chunk of riders just shot off and sodded the group ride spirit.
As the climb of Box Hill was not timed – because not hitting the KOM starter marker – I have no idea how I fared today. Sad times.
Coming round to finish off I was really flagging.
Completing the Triple Loops route, along with hitting both riding goals did very little to help my motivation.
Frankly I was just happy to be getting off.
After the ride, the Garmin prompted me for 36 hours suggested rest. I might take it up on this.
At the moment I have no real desire to do another Zwift ride tomorrow. I’ve done my work for the week. Do I really need to do more, if I’m not feeling it?
As above, I was kinda planning on heading outdoors again tomorrow, but all things considered I don’t think I’m going to bother.
As I’m writing this, I’m feeling all kinds of pain.
My right shoulder hurts. The bottom right of my back hurts. My legs are tired. My inner thighs hurt.
I think a lot of this boils down to tiredness and stress. Or tiredness because of stress. My sleep pattern is messed up at the moment. 5 or 6 hours a night for an entire week? Yowser.
I’m trying to look for positives in this one.
I think the biggest positive is in turning up I helped the cause. The more riders, the more mask donations. Happy to have done something useful on that front, at least.
Maybe I wasn’t ready for back to back SST sessions this week.
I really feel like my form has dropped off a cliff since the illness. It’s extraordinarily frustrating to have worked so hard for something only to have it taken away from me again.
I really felt like I was heading towards that 230w FTP target in the first half of the year, and now it feels a long way away again.
Ahh well, as I said right at the start. Sometimes you have good days. Sometimes you have bad days. And sometimes the days are in between. Keep turning up. Keep turning the pedals. It will all come back in time.
But for now. I rest.
