Sore and Lovin' It

Today my legs are hurting, kind of like the hurt of a 300lb person sitting on my lap, or maybe like getting kicked in the quads by a horse, either way let's just say they are sore. Last night I did one of my most difficult training rides in quite a while, completing 3 sets of Over/Under intervals and then following that up with 7 hill repeats. For those not familiar with OU intervals it goes something like this...smash your legs with a hammer for 8 minutes and then go directly in to 3 minutes of stabbing them with a large serrated knife. It's quite fun! Actually that is what it feels like but in reality it goes like this....8 minutes at 89% of max HR, directly in to 3 minutes at 92% of max HR, 8 minutes at 89%, 3 minutes at 92%, etc...... so it is all continuous for 3 repeats of 8/3. In real time it looks like this.....8/3/8/3/8/3...non-stop, that is one set. I did 3 sets of those with a 5 minute break between sets. On the way back home I did 7 repeats up 2 hills, 3 up a really steep hill and then 4 up a really long (for WI) hill. The two hills are like a half-pipe so I went up one, then down it, right up the other and so on 7 times then I finally went home. My legs are killing me today but the next 3 days are rest days on the bike so I will get to just take it easy with rides of 1 hour tonight, 1.5 tomorrow and then 1 hour again on Friday. Say what??!?! Only one hour?! Yup, only one hour, pretty easy hey? It does seem easy but it's all part of the plan of building up the body by trashing it for just over 2 weeks and then allowing it to build up for a week and a half. So for the last 2 weeks and 3 days I've been doing intervals or race simulation 3 days a week and now is the time to let the body rest and rejuvenate and if all works well that means a peak for the 26th. Most novice bikers will ask, "how can you get better by riding for only one hour?". It's not the riding that you do...it's the riding that you don't do that makes you better. Most novice riders (yes, I'm only a Cat. 4 now, but far from a novice if you know my background) don't rest enough to allow their body to compensate for their hard efforts. Most racers just think "go, go, go" on every ride and try to hammer all the time to prove that they have the biggest, um, helmet, bike helmet, yeah. They never allow for recovery time on the bike and then they end up overtraining or just getting stale from riding one speed, fast, all the time. Anyways, it helps mentally as well to just be able to go out and actually look around and enjoy the ride for what it is. So, after the ride tonight I'm hoping to go shoot some guns as my friend Jason and I are hopefully going to a target range to shoot a snub-nosed .38 and a "Baby" Desert Eagle 9mm. It'll help get out some frustration from work and it's always fun to shoot some of the "terrorist" targets. Until next time..........