As usual I had a tough time sleeping last night and was “this close” to calling in sick for the morning workout. On top of no sleep, I ate a terrible dinner last night and was a little worried about what a 3-hour-group-training ride would do to my health. Not to mention the 20 minute run that followed.
My alarm went off at 6:15 and I laid in bed through a couple snoozes, calculating my next move. I reasoned a dozen excuses and promised I would do the ride later that morning. Surely, after a little more sleep and a solid breakfast I could breeze through this workout. But, something gave me a last minute push and I waltzed into the YMCA around 7:15.
I had already made the decision I would only ride 2 1/2 hours instead of three. My apprehension was two-fold. One, I didn’t really see the point of such a long ride, and on top of it a full hour longer than I’ve ever gone. And two, I am continually worried about wearing down, especially on low sleep and bad fuel.
About 2:15 minutes into the ride (that included a progressive scale spin class) I decided I would ride until 10 o’clock, which would have been about 2:40, but the group laid on the guilt.
“Why would you quit 20 minutes away from the goal??”
I responded with the logic outlined above, put my head down and kept peddling. Before I knew it, 10:00 was there and, and while reticent, I decided to go the extra 20 minutes.
Someone said quitting then would be similar to scaling Everest and going back down a few hundred feet from the top. “Would you do that?”
I said it would depend how many cameras were on me 🙂 It’s the journey, right?
But, seriously. Sometimes I think that this early in the training (over 200 days out) I will benefit from going a little less on some of these heavy workouts. Especially in situations like today when I know I can make it. For me, that’s 90% of the battle. If I have confidence in the distance, that counts for a lot.
But I know that races are won and lost on these cold and early Saturday mornings in February. I used to spend hours on non-glamorous baseball drills that made me a far better player. I think today was a great example of that, and I’m happy to report, I feel great. In fact, it’s about 3:30 now and I almost think I could do another 3 hours if I wanted. But, I’ll just save that energy for tomorrow’s 10 mile run.