I forgot that training can be hard

Every new phase of training poses new and unique challenges. Just when you finally adapt to the training load and intensities, you move on to a whole new set of workouts that make you hurt in very different ways. It's like in the beginning of the season, when I first start building up my long bike rides and upon finishing those 4, 5 and eventually 6-hour bike rides, I find myself completely exhausted and unable to do much more than lie on the couch for the rest of the afternoon, pretty much only getting up for food and eventually to go to bed. Week after week of long rides, and eventually I will still finish feeling like I've really done a long workout, but I can still function like a normal human being for the rest of the afternoon.

With the exception of my taper week and my rest week last week, I've been putting in pretty big hours. But it had started to feel so routine that I almost didn't feel like I was training that much. Except on weekends, when I definitely felt like I was training a lot. This week began 11 weeks out from race day. This is where you take all of that base and strength work and hopefully turn yourself into a fast athlete for race day. The problem is, I hate going fast. It hurts. Every time I run a 5K I wish it was a half marathon because those hurt a lot less.

I also tend to forget how much a really hard speed workout can take out of you. I already mentioned what a disaster my track workout was, and today was my first serious bike workout in a while. I had to do it on the trainer to hit some wattages due to my lack of power meter, which was kind of annoying since at least first thing this morning the weather was decent, but I don't think there is any way I could've replicated this one outside. I had to do 8x2.5 minutes at 295 watts with 2.5 minutes recovery. Right from the first interval I was convinced I wasn't going to make it through all 8. My legs burned, my stomach felt queasy, the sweat puddled up on the basement floor, my heart rate soared and I just kept on pedaling. I have no idea how I got through it, but I do know that I haven't felt that exhausted after a bike workout in a very long time. I think that probably means I'm doing something right. The transition run after that sure did suffer though. At least my cold seems to be dissipating.

In other, unrelated news, on Saturday I am going to Disney World! I'm heading down with my parents, my younger brother, my older sister, her husband and their 2 kids, my niece who is 6 and my nephew who is 3. We haven't been down there as a family since 1996. Everyone but my parents has been down since then on our own, but it will be fun to take a real family vacation like this. Obviously a lot different since we are not kids anymore, but I think we'll manage to have a lot of fun anyway. The only thing is that of course I will still have to get all of my training in. My bike is coming with me. After this I will have certainly had my fill of flying, the airport and packing and unpacking the bike for a while since this is the 3rd trip in 6 weeks. If anyone has any tips on where to ride in Orlando, I'll take them! Ugh, have to pack again....