This week my workout schedule changed slightly with a spin on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday plus an outdoor ride on Saturday. This is all in preparation for the Easter Camp that will be mostly riding. Yesterday's ride outside was great. I met the SAA members at 8:30am and we set off on a ride from Steveston into Vancouver. In the end, my route took me on a 65km glorious sunshiny tour of Richmond and Vancouver. It was cold and crisp but no wind. There were many times when I wanted to stop and take photos but I knew that keeping up with the group was important and didn't stop.
Here is the route I took.
Today, the weather is much the same. I headed off on my regular Sunday morning long run around 8:30am. 90 minute run was on the schedule for today. This is not uncommon for my schedule. Usually the Sunday long run is anywhere from 1-2 hours. The big difference, however, is that I haven't had a 65km ride the day before. During my run, my legs and whole body felt heavy. I was wearing a fully loaded 4 bottle Fuel Belt which does add some weight but this was a different feeling than that. My heart rate stayed relatively low but my legs were done. My left quad twinged a few times letting me know that it could cramp at any time. Luckily it did not.
Every week my volume is increasing and my body is continuing to adapt. I am really looking forward to the day when I look back at this post and say "I can't believe I was so tired after only a 65km ride and a 90 minute run". I know this day will come.
Below is a quote from Haruki Murakami's memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running that I think is quite fitting.
Through experience you learn how to compensate for your physical shortcomings. To put it another way, learning from experience is what makes triathlon so much fun.
Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive - or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to the awareness of the fluidity within action itself.
Happy Training!
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