Why gaining 5 pounds was the best thing that ever happened to me

For the first time in at least 12 and probably more like 18 months, I'm looking forward to doing intervals. I know that's crazy. When I first started bike racing in 2005, I did intervals in the spring with vim and vigor. I loved the hurt. I looked forward to the screaming lungs and legs. I relished the time I spent above lactate threshold. But I was afraid. Afraid I'd loose it. Afraid I'd slip backward, so I never really took any kind of break in the fall of 2005 and decided that if I really wanted to be competitive in 2006, I needed to seriously up my mileage.

And so in the winter I did. I rode the highest volume that I ever had. Long rides on the weekends (and some Friday afternoons as well). Up to 2 hours of Tempo on the trainer. And it payed off. I won the Masters 4/5 group at Ken Woods and I was feeling pretty darn good. But I was also feeling pretty tired. I did some track racing and got upgraded to Cat. 3 on the track. Also good! Then I crashed at the track. Not so good. It took me a long while to recover mentally and was much harder on me physically than I thought. So I went into 2007 still feeling worn out, still afraid of loosing my fitness.

I trained pretty hard during the off season, and then I got this nasty flu. I was off the bike for 3 weeks+. And I was horrified. I knew that I had lost it. But I wasn't exactly being rational at that point. I just started bailing on everything. Opening night at the track. I didn't race. Ken Woods. It was 70 degrees! and I didn't race. The summer wore on and I tried again and again to get to the track for a race night and I just couldn't do it. The truth was I just wasn't motivated.

Then fall of 2007 rolled around. I had been doing some intervals and training over the summer, even though I wasn't racing, thinking I'd stay in shape. The first snow hit in November. I wasn't going to ride outside, and I just couldn't get myself on the trainer. I did some cross training with weights, but I was down to 3 hours a week maximum training. Then over Christmas we visited my family in Maryland and I didn't exercise at all. For almost 2 weeks. I ate great food and gained 5 pounds and a notch on my belt.

Then in January, things started to change. Maybe I'll ride outside some. Maybe I'll hit the trainer, just for an hour. Maybe I'll spend 30 minutes on the rollers. Maybe I'll do some weights, just to get back in shape. In a periodized training program, that's called the preparation period, even though I didn't realize I was doing it. So by February, I was ready to try something harder again. And I started doing some intervals and trying to get longer rides in on the weekend. Wow, now I'm suddenly psyched about intervals. Weird. And I'm looking forward to doing some racing.

Turns out that I needed to really, deeply recover. But now I'm back. And I may not be as fast or competitive as I was in 2005/2006. But I'm sure as hell going to try.