Updating this website hasn’t gone so well for me in the past year. I used to be quick with the witticisms (or so I tell myself) and filled with random anecdotes about my daily life, but then that well dried up and I couldn’t think of worthwhile things to post anymore. I would have written about my job, but there was little I could say without sharing too much about my workplace or my coworkers. I would have written about Bobby or my family, but those relationships tend to fare better when I’m not making fun of them on the Internet. Finally, I would have written about my biking, but I didn’t think you’d care. I ride through the woods fast; how exciting.
But I have realized recently that in my biking, there are still tidbits of absurdity that would make for good posts. For example, on two consecutive nights a few weeks ago, I started my training rides at 10:30pm and rode my road bike up and down the same 2.5 mile stretch of road for two hours each night. Can you imagine that? Riding up and down and up and down in the middle of the night on a tiny strip of asphalt in full spandex and blinking lights?
Or the big race I won in North Carolina. I crashed a dozen times – faceplanted on boulders in front of a large crowd, punched myself in the stomach with my own seat on a muddy downhill, fell over into trees and onto roots, even took out another racer – and somehow through an amusing combination of cramping, crying, and other people’s flat tires, I still won. Even my own father looked at the results listing me as a winner and was like, “Huh? What?” Then we went to a complete stranger’s house so I could take a shower. Good times.
The point I’m getting at is that I am going to try to use this website going forward to document my training and racing, since (a) it’s my whole life and (b) otherwise the site is nothing but the sound of crickets chirping.
To get started, I will tell you that this week I am on a rest week. I train for three weeks and rest for one, and that one week never fails to torment me. Sure it’s nice to rest and I certainly do look forward to the break in my training, but once I get a day or so into the week, I start to lose my mind. The point of a rest week is to allow my body to recover from and adapt to the training I’ve just completed and, as such, I am not supposed to engage in any intense physical activity. I don’t do well with that restriction – by day three, I start to feel lazy and flabby. It doesn’t help that my immense appetite does not take a rest week and instead uses that additional time freed up by not training to think about food food food all freaking day. I cannot seem to stop worrying about everything I put in my mouth, while at the same time eating ceaselessly. At one point yesterday, Bobby watched me make my 18th trip to the refrigerator by early afternoon and remarked, “Having you be unemployed and home all day is going to get really expensive.”
I wish I could get control of the whole relationship between food and training and my body, but lately it feels insanely out of whack. Sometimes I panic that I’m not eating enough to fuel the training, and then five minutes later I feel guilty when I see the bones of the entire buffalo I just ate. The only time I feel like I’ve got everything under control is right before and right after training rides (and only then if I’ve ridden until my legs nearly fell off). Getting into the potential psychological ramifications of my obsession with my daily intake would make for rather dry reading, so I’ll pass on that, but I do know that I need to get a grip already before Bobby smothers me with a pizza. A pizza that I have inevitably not earned by riding for nine hours.
Welcome to the life of a wannabe pro cyclist. I eat my feelings and feel bad about my feelings so I eat them.