transitions

Saturday: Biked 14.75 miles (total time - approx 1 hr); ran 15 minutes (transition time: approx 2 minutes)

I've been thinking a lot about transitions since Saturday. More even then the training, the transitions seem like the key to the whole race. The transition run I did this weekend was by far the most mentally challenging training session I've had since I started this wild ride over a month ago.

Maybe too on a more macro plan, I've been thinking about transitions - how to balance work and training, training and friends, friends and work. Saturday for example, I got up early so I could have brunch with friends - and ended up having a totally surreal experience eating eggs and toast in the middle of a some kind of yuppie goth convention. Try eating toast and having a regular conversation when there's a girl wearing red contacts, red eyeliner and a red lace corset in your line of vision. Then after brunch, I hopped over to the bike shop to get a cheap mileage meter (now on number three - I seem to be as successful with bike odometers as I am with sunglasses). Then I took my three duffle bags worth of stuff (and my bike) and shoved in all in the car and drove to the C&O Canal trail in Georgetown. For some reason - by this point - I was in a bad mood. I was irritable at everything - and the first two miles of the trail are paved, but the pavement is old and pitted. The roots growing right underneath the trail are pushing upwards and I could feel every jolt through my handlebars. Maybe I should experiment with tire pressure too - there are just no shocks on a road bike. I also felt strangely weak, like for every rotation of my tire I was pushing extra hard - like you feel when you're back break is clamped down over your tire and don't realize it until you've gone five miles and are totally exhausted. My mental state kept deteriorating until was until I was so irritated that I wanted to scream. Then I suddenly realized that I was mentally competing with every person on that trail. I was trying to pass everyone and everything - walkers, joggers, other bikers, people pushing baby carriages - everyone. It was exhausting because no matter how fast I went or how hard I pushed there was always someone else ahead of me. When I realized how totally pointless that was, I settled down a lot and started concentrating on my own performance -- which is when two things occurred to me. First, the trail was graded uphill at about 15%, which is why I was working so hard and second, I was rocking along (uphill!) at 14 mph. Both made me feel better. 14mph is not fast enough yet, but it's much faster than I thought I was going.

So by the time I biked back to the car, I was feeling a lot better about life. I threw the bike and my helmet in the car, pulled off my bike shoes and swapped them out for my running shoes, realized I was still wearing my gloves and took those off - nearly locked myself out of my car by leaving the keys under the bike, took a swig of water, grabbed by bike odometer as a timer and ran off. And on my GOD it hurt. My legs felt dead - heavy and unresponsive. I had to run up two flights of stairs to get to the gravel C&O path and I had the thought, "god, I hope I don't fall on my face because I'll probably knock all my teeth out and that would suck". Running after an hour of biking was grueling. And mentally it was torture - instead of feeling light and finding my stride, I felt like I was coaxing and coaching every motion - lift the foot, lift the knee, move the leg, put the foot down, repeat. I made myself run for 15 minutes - after about 12 I started to feel better. But better is not saying a whole lot. However, I have to say when I finally stopped I had this profound sense of satisfaction - like I had won some kind of inner toughness battle.

Other things I learned from this experience, plan plan plan everything. Apparently when I'm in the zone I just stop thinking clearly. Nearly locking myself out of the car is one such example. Another one would be that I was so intent on running out my 15 minutes that it didn't occur to me to run out 8 minutes and then turn around -- so instead I had to walk back a mile and half at the end of it.

Anyway, all that aside, the other part about transitions is that I think I can get so wrapped up in planning to train and how to train and what to do at the gym or on the bike or on the treadmill, that I forgot to feed the other parts of my life. Last night when I got home, for example, all I wanted to do was get in the bathtub and then go to bed. But I had said I would go to dinner at a friend's house. So I got up - reluctantly - and went. And I had an amazing night and finally fell into bed at three am, deliciously tipsy on good wine and excellent company. I have to remember that taking care of myself is not always just about eating protein and sleeping nine hours a night.

So today, in honor of that, I am not doing anything. I am going to sit in my house and drink coffee and read the papers. And I might even get back in bed and watch a movie. It's positively decadant.