{"id":3126,"date":"2011-03-02T18:48:44","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T00:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=3126"},"modified":"2011-03-02T18:51:39","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T00:51:39","slug":"back-at-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=3126","title":{"rendered":"Back at It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Through my whirlwind 4 seasons as a bike racer, I’ve figured out that I need as much mental recovery from racing\/training as much as I need physical recovery. If I skip that step, then I’ll end up in the same place I was when I broke down, quit the Metro VW team, and nearly threw my road bike in the Mississippi River in the process.<\/p>\n

The lead-in to a big race like Southern Cross is not necessarily stressful. It just involves a lot of focus- eat right, train right, go to bed on time, etc. The race itself is both physically and mentally taxing. Physically…\u00a0 that’s obvious. I didn’t wear a heart rate monitor, but I know enough from past training that I was laying down a solid near\/at\/over threshold effort for every second of the 3 hours and 44 minutes of racing.<\/p>\n

Mentally? Well, for starters, It’s a little scary to be putting that sort of effort out on the first climb. I’ve done it in the past, and it’s only resulted in heartbreak a la Southern Cross 2009 and Cohutta 2010. This time, I had to do it and have faith in both my pre-race training plan and my during-race eating plan. Later in the race, I had to keep yelling at myself to resist the urge to slow down. On the second climb, I ignored a lot of screaming from my legs. Everything but my brain was saying “chill… pace yourself… use the 34×26…”<\/p>\n\n

When I crossed the finish line, I wanted to scream, laugh, cry, and sleep all at the same time. The mental release is pretty intense.<\/p>\n

For the few days following, I tried my best to live “normally” instead of like a wannabe pro bike racer. I rode a little, ate pizza, and drank beer. It worked out well since we had a kickass open house planned at work. It was kind of a combination meet & greet for some of the new staff, chance to show off how insanely clean the shop is, and release party for our new stock of Niner bikes. Yep- you heard it right- Outdoors, Inc. is officially a Niner dealer now!<\/p>\n

So the timing on that worked out well. Today I got up, milled around the house a bit, then went out for a 4 hour ride. My legs and my brain felt superb, and I made 70 miles in 3 hours and 45 minutes at a zone 2 effort. Looking at my schedule on Training Peaks, I’m excited to see a killer block of training on the calendar. I feel the need to quote Charlie Sheen right now…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through my whirlwind 4 seasons as a bike racer, I’ve figured out that I need as much mental recovery from racing\/training as much as I need physical recovery. If I skip that step, then I’ll end up in the same place I was when I broke down, quit the Metro VW team, and nearly threw…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Uq-Oq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3126"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3128,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}