Leaking the Pounds Away.
What goes down must go up.
When I ride in Eastern Tennessee or Virginia, I have to remind myself that every fun little descent is always immediately followed by a soul-destroying ascent. Sometimes you can wind it up and catch the roll, but a lot of the time you just have to suck it up and grind.
A couple days of intestinal distress led me to modify that.
What goes down immediately goes through.
While it may be a great way to lose weight, I can't really recommend it for boosting energy levels. Mine are pretty much tanked, but I still wanted to get out and ride. A couple hours visiting old loops at a mellow pace was all that I was good for yesterday. Today I decided to head back to the Foothills Parkway and do a longer ride.
In retrospect, considering all of the elements involved, it was probably not the best idea. As I understand it, you need to be able to absorb food to use it as energy. Also, it gets dark down here earlier than it does in summertime Alaska. Finally, doubling your training volume in a short period of time is a good way to cook yourself- trainer miles are not road miles, no matter how many intervals you do.
I started the climb at a moderate pace, because I didn't have sleeveless nose-breathers to pace me this time. When I reached the top, I decided to explore a side route instead of descending to the end of the Parkway for the turnaround. I thought I had a vague concept of where I was going, but as I committed myself to switchbacks so tight I swore I was doing figure 8s, I was less convinced. These switchbacks were steep and rough, and given the choice of ruining a set of brake blocks or spreading body parts across the mountainside, I chose to play it a little conservative. Helping with the decision was the fact that I was riding the worst possible descending wheels, which are also fairly horrible climbing wheels. I'm not sure what they actually do well, but at least they were cheap.
By the time I reached the bottom, I was a couple ridge lines away from the turnaround, with less than half a clue where I was. Then I remembered my fancy GPS computer was purchased with these roads in mind, so I checked the mapping page and confirmed that I was somewhere over there(ish). Ah, technology. With this valuable information, I followed various twisty roads that seemed to double back on themselves. Eventually I found my way back to the turnaround, and started contemplating how I was going to make it back to the car before it got dark. I quickly came to the realization that I better start climbing, to at least eat up as much of the distance as possible before I was run over by fat guys on Harleys returning from Deals Gap.
Since it was humid (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.32 gazillion percent, give or take) and hovering around 90F, when I felt a few drops of rain as I began the climb I was relieved. Then it stopped. The humidity closed in again. I focused on the grind. I admired how cut my calves were looking as they pedaled squares. I surrendered to the suck, and eventually I got to the top and started my descent in the failing light.
It was right at this moment, when I was coasting at 35MPH or better, that it started to rain. As Forrest Gump put it, "little bitty stinging rain". My sunglasses, with lenses too dark to see anything through, provided little protection from their position on my GPS mount. I squinted through the impacts and tried not to go off the road, descending the final nine miles, and somehow I found my way back to the car.
When I pulled up I immediately noticed two things. The first- I was in my biggest gears. The second- I didn't have the leg strength to either turn the cranks to shift into an easier gear or clip out of the pedals to put a foot down. After a wobbly track stand that would have made any garden variety hipster spit his macchiato all over his messenger bag, I was able to avoid ending the ride sprawled in a cellulite heap.
Let's put that one in the win column, just to make the game more interesting.
When I ride in Eastern Tennessee or Virginia, I have to remind myself that every fun little descent is always immediately followed by a soul-destroying ascent. Sometimes you can wind it up and catch the roll, but a lot of the time you just have to suck it up and grind.
A couple days of intestinal distress led me to modify that.
What goes down immediately goes through.
While it may be a great way to lose weight, I can't really recommend it for boosting energy levels. Mine are pretty much tanked, but I still wanted to get out and ride. A couple hours visiting old loops at a mellow pace was all that I was good for yesterday. Today I decided to head back to the Foothills Parkway and do a longer ride.
In retrospect, considering all of the elements involved, it was probably not the best idea. As I understand it, you need to be able to absorb food to use it as energy. Also, it gets dark down here earlier than it does in summertime Alaska. Finally, doubling your training volume in a short period of time is a good way to cook yourself- trainer miles are not road miles, no matter how many intervals you do.
I started the climb at a moderate pace, because I didn't have sleeveless nose-breathers to pace me this time. When I reached the top, I decided to explore a side route instead of descending to the end of the Parkway for the turnaround. I thought I had a vague concept of where I was going, but as I committed myself to switchbacks so tight I swore I was doing figure 8s, I was less convinced. These switchbacks were steep and rough, and given the choice of ruining a set of brake blocks or spreading body parts across the mountainside, I chose to play it a little conservative. Helping with the decision was the fact that I was riding the worst possible descending wheels, which are also fairly horrible climbing wheels. I'm not sure what they actually do well, but at least they were cheap.
By the time I reached the bottom, I was a couple ridge lines away from the turnaround, with less than half a clue where I was. Then I remembered my fancy GPS computer was purchased with these roads in mind, so I checked the mapping page and confirmed that I was somewhere over there(ish). Ah, technology. With this valuable information, I followed various twisty roads that seemed to double back on themselves. Eventually I found my way back to the turnaround, and started contemplating how I was going to make it back to the car before it got dark. I quickly came to the realization that I better start climbing, to at least eat up as much of the distance as possible before I was run over by fat guys on Harleys returning from Deals Gap.
Since it was humid (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.32 gazillion percent, give or take) and hovering around 90F, when I felt a few drops of rain as I began the climb I was relieved. Then it stopped. The humidity closed in again. I focused on the grind. I admired how cut my calves were looking as they pedaled squares. I surrendered to the suck, and eventually I got to the top and started my descent in the failing light.
It was right at this moment, when I was coasting at 35MPH or better, that it started to rain. As Forrest Gump put it, "little bitty stinging rain". My sunglasses, with lenses too dark to see anything through, provided little protection from their position on my GPS mount. I squinted through the impacts and tried not to go off the road, descending the final nine miles, and somehow I found my way back to the car.
When I pulled up I immediately noticed two things. The first- I was in my biggest gears. The second- I didn't have the leg strength to either turn the cranks to shift into an easier gear or clip out of the pedals to put a foot down. After a wobbly track stand that would have made any garden variety hipster spit his macchiato all over his messenger bag, I was able to avoid ending the ride sprawled in a cellulite heap.
Let's put that one in the win column, just to make the game more interesting.
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