After a week of relaxing and riding, I was ready to get back to my usual training schedule.  Yesterday morning, I decided to ride the geared bike first thing and try the Powertap wheel and new cable routing.The workout was somewhat short and meant to serve as a wake-up call to the vacationing legs. I hit the prescribed numbers, but felt a little sluggish. No big deal- I figured it was just the “waking up” process.

Oh yeah… and the shifting is awesome now. Hopefully I’ve solved that one for good. The powertap, on the other hand, is getting a warranty replacement on the freehub because the two bearings inside seized up sometime during/after Ryan rode it in the Syllamo’s Revenge 50.

Anyway… I thought I’d be good today. I awoke to thunderstorms this morning, but since it’s (finally) warm out, I headed out for my long ride after the worst passed and the rain was steady and thunderless. I felt fine, but should have known better when I passed through a space/time gap early in the ride (you know- where you space out for a minute then are somewhat disoriented when you snap back). I did my best to ignore my brief lapse of awareness and continued on my way.

An hour and a half later, I started to feel exhausted. I sent a text to my coach and asked for advice, and in the meantime, attempted one of the prescribed intervals. It wasn’t good. I checked my phone and saw the advice that I probably should have figured out on my own: “Go Home.”

So, I did. It rained more. When I got back, I laid down in the shower and almost fell asleep. It wasn’t a total wash of a day- I still had 3 solid hours of steady riding. The rain was fun, too.
Now, I’m laid back on the bed eating a Kashi pizza and watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos on Hulu with a snoring dog and farting kitten. I finally figured out how to get my computer and my phone to talk to one another, so I’ll get some photos of all sorts of things posted tomorrow morning.