Empty

I did the ABD TT on Sunday. Highlights...the guy from the race before who was on the station I was assigned to was amazing. He was 80 yrs old and hooked up on the Computrainer giving it a go. He never once wavered - even though he needed help off the bike in the end.

His race was awesome. Unfortunately the side-effect of his effort was that I was stuck sitting behind him for 15-20minutes longer than I should have been. I totally cooled down while all of the guys I was racing against were busy warming up on their stations.

By the time I got mounted in and calibrated I was able to take a few seconds of spinning before the official came to the front and said "slow to under 10mph.....OK" and the screen flashed "3,2,1, GO!"

SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!. It was like a real race - I was cold at the start.

Good thing is that this was only 10k. A sprint by bike standards. I noticed I was laying down some serious power form the start. I looked up and saw I was in 2nd place right off the bat. I slowly degraded - like I knew I would and slipped into third.....and then 4th. I finished in 4th and felt like I had done about 95% of what I could have done.

So....results get posted and I placed 15th out of 28 who took the start in cat 4. That's a little misleading because this is ABR and entry level ABR was Cat 4 until this year so many of those are entry level guys.

So...not feeling stoked, but a better effort than the week before. So Monday I go lift weights. I bumped everything up greatly and dropped the reps. Then tonight I get to the shop to do the trainer class. Rob is leading the class....I had an idea that pain was coming.

He starts spinning and says, "We're doing 3 reps of 10 minutes at threshold. Then we'll take a long break....*wink*...and then do it again". For reference that means we'll be putting out roughly the same power I put out during the TT (which lasted for 16 minutes) over 1 hour.

It sucked. By the end my legs were absolutely empty. I have not felt like this in a long time -if ever. Maybe my moment of despair during the RAIN ride was similar. I just felt empty.

60 minutes at threshold will make you question a lot of stuff. It will take you into the rabbit hole that is your mind. It is exquisite suffering. I am a strange guy. I know that, but weird stuff starts happening to me mentally when I am on the limit like that. My mind starts playing tricks.

In the end I was empty. Shaking kind of empty. Disoriented kind of empty. Wishing I would puke kind of empty. Towards the end my power dropped 100W and I still felt like i was killing myself. The body is a weird place.