Tuesday Night Time Trial

Boy, I was a head case yesterday.  Unable to focus, out of sorts, tense.  Not a pleasure to be around in the least.

We went to the RunFar time trial last night.  The last time we went, we left the house at 5:00PM and got there a little before 6PM.  Yesterday, we left the house at 5:08 and got there sometime after 6:30PM.  Traffic was amazingly horrible, which just added to my sense of gripiness.  I hate to feel rushed and behind.

We did one loop on the veloway and then hit Mopac.  I really felt like I was riding much better than the last time.  I’d made a point to eat something before we left because I kind of petered out at the first one.  I know I was riding faster up the hills on the front side, at least keeping my speed up and not dipping down to 10mph like before.  And I made a much smoother turn at the halfway point as opposed to last time when I had to slow and wait for cars.  On the back half, I hit 29mph at one point!  I was thinking, “Man, I’ll drop some time and be under 25 minutes!”   This lifted my spirits immensely.   But NO.  I added time…just 30 seconds but still, I’d thought I was doing better.  This exacerbated my foul mood.  We should’ve done another loop but I just wanted OUT of there.    The whole time I’m thinking we need to get back to care for the kid at home but when we got home, I found out he’d gone with his sister to the movie night.  We’d had all the time in the world!  Like I said, I was just out of it.  Nothing clicked.  Fortunately, a good night’s sleep seemed to take care of that crap.

I have to really watch myself as I am super competitive.  It may not seem it because I don’t race so much any more, but I get very hung up on PRs and performance markers.  For example, these 30 seconds.  I KNOW that what I am doing is building endurance on my bike and I am doing nothing to improve speed (other than being more proficient), so it should be no surprise that I’m not really burning it up out there.  But I will beat myself up relentlessly over this “slip.”  Stop it!