inauspicio.us

while my running fitness slowly spirals downward, …

while my running fitness slowly spirals downward, i’m managing to keep up, at least a little bit, with my biking and swimming. you could be forgiven for thinking that with all the time and energy i am now not devoting to running, i could bike and swim more. you’d be wrong, but i understand why you might think that. training is not a zero-sum game: it’s tied inextricably to motivation. anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or inhuman, maybe both.

as far as i can tell, all athletes have problems with motivation from time to time. demons, habits, neuroses, what have you. i get it worst when i can’t train the way i’d like to, and i skip workouts because i think if i can’t run fourteen miles, what’s the point trying to run three? anyway this morning i rode my bike in the kitchen again, did a workout that is quite popular among cyclists the past couple of years. ten minutes warmup (hardly necessary, since the temperature in my apartment is once again hovering in the mid-eighties), two times twenty minutes tempo with ten minutes rest, ten minutes cooldown.

since i have nifty new power-measuring trainer, i even have data that can tell me a bit about this little project. i did my intervals at 320 watts today, which felt like just a little bit below threshold. i’m just getting over a cold, but before i got sick, i was pushing 330, sometimes 340 watts at the same effort. hopefully i’ll be back there next week. and my swim times are coming down too. if only i could run. sniff.