Some Days.

Some days it's in the legs, some days it isn't.
  
I wish I could forecast what kind of day it's going to be ahead of time. Maybe then I would know if I can do a workout or not.
  
I have all of these fancy graphs and stuff that tell how I should be feeling, but the fact is that I'm not really 100% on interpreting them and I'm 100% sure I don't want to geek out on the numbers enough to be able to interpret them 100%. I just use them as a general guide, because I know the data is incomplete. The numbers don't know what I ate last night. They don't know how I slept. They don't know how my day went, or how many diapers I changed. They don't know much more than how the last few workouts went, because that's all I tell them. It's more about trend analysis than hard science for me.
  
I can use the numbers well enough to ramp up or down the stress for an event, but sometimes I miss the mark by a day or so. If I was getting paid to ride my bike, I'd care more. I'd probably pay more attention to he numbers, and maybe not take "all you can eat" as a challenge.
  
As my body slowly transitions into the realities of the trainer, the numbers lie to me. They tell me I'm feeling great, even when I'm not. The numbers haven't quite adjusted to the fact that I haven't done any five hour rides in well over a month, and that I've traded duration for intensity. They're slowly trending that way, but they're nothing I can rely on just yet.
  
By the time they settle down into a steady pattern from week to week, I'll probably be back on the road, and everything will be thrown out of whack and the process will start all over.
  
So, if I can't rely on the numbers most of the time, why even bother? Good question, and one I don't have a great answer for. I think they do have value, even if I'm not smart enough to see it at the moment. They also give me a motivational target, which is something that is extremely valuable in the dark months. They also give me a general idea of where I am as compared to a similar time in a previous year. Maybe one day I'll figure out how to use that information to avoid the same mistakes.
  
Not likely, but there's always a chance.

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