Oh, that was a tough little wednesday afternoon!

Originally, today would have been pretty fun. About 3 hours of riding around, meet up with the moto. 45 minutes of rolling along in the draft, then 10 minutes or so of just getting my legs rippied off. This is what I like to see on my training plan because although it hurts, the time passes quickly and it's more than just staring at the HRM. Behind the moto, you have to accellerate, move subtlly to follow the draft, feather brakes, accellerate again, and watch that rear tire! You get to feel fast and use big gears at a pace that can't really be experienced except at an NRC crit. And those final hard minutes are what gives you the true ability to dig deep when you're in the pain box! The cool thing about a couple weeks of this once a week turns you into a draft- demon and gives you the ability to stick to any wheel! In the days after pacing my legs always feel like they want to churn on the flats, so I can't wait to get a moto lined up in the coming weeks...

But today, I could not round up a derny or a cigar smoking pilot and so I had to resort to the plan-b workout which is pretty torturous. It goes kind of like- 10min. @ painful into 8min. of beyond painful into 5min. of intolerable, all done someplace flat and usually windy. This is followed by some rest and dryheaving, then 20 minutes of tempo. But once a minute I have to jump hard out of the saddle, so 20 hard jumps in there. Today, by the time I'd done this stuff I was at Stinson Beach which means I get to start climbing. I chose Panoramic as my exscape route and it was a slow and uncomfortable half hour to the top. When I got home I had a good solid 4.5 hours in the saddle.

My legs hurt when I woke up, but now they really hurt! I'll spend tomorrow on the couch, and do my race-prep on friday and then BANG-O I'll be ripping on saturday (hopefully...).