Crash and Burn

Yesterday was going to be a great day on the bike....I was flying out of work to get home to ride with BOYZ from the team around Whitnall Park and I thought I was feeling o.k. after not feeling well most of Tuesday and Wednesday with a sore throat and body aches. I had some sludge (coffee) from the company machine before I left and I think that gave me some false energy and made me feel better than I really was. It was a bit chilly on the ride over although I was dressed for it, but noticed that I got congested right away and was having trouble breathing. I got to the course and we had a good group of Andy, Glen, Greg, Doug, Tony, and Todd for a short time. I could tell that my legs weren't up to par and that my breathing and HR were off but I figured that once I got the fire stoked I would be o.k.. Well, that didn't happen and I was sucking big time as we did our laps around the course. We were doing some pretty fast laps and trying some breakaways and I couldn't even hang with the group, I got dropped pretty quickly and felt like I was turning the pedals with baby legs. My HR was stuck in 3rd gear and my legs were stuck in neutral I think. Normally my HR for intervals is in the 172-180 range depending on what I'm doing, but my average HR yesterday was only 158, it was completely suppressed and I couldn't get it elevated. I think my body was just fighting this cold and just didn't have anything left to get the bike going fast so it wasn't really a great workout, but it was fun to be out with the guys anyways. I'm hoping that I'm recovered by Saturday for the race and I'll take it easy for the most part until then. I doubled up on the vitamins last night and this morning, had a bunch of hot green tea with honey, took some Theraflu last night to get some good sleep and I'll do that the next couple of nights as well. Tonight I will do an easy 2 hour ride on the trainer just to get the legs cleaned out from yesterday and then tomorrow I'll do about 1.5 hours with some sprints to open up the legs for Saturday. I plan on being 100% for the race no matter what my body says, it has no choice but to go fast on Saturday. We'll have a good contingent of guys lined up for the race and based on how everyone else was flying last night I'm excited for our chances to pull out a win. We have lots of races in the next couple of weeks so IF my form is off on Saturday because of this cold I won't worry too much about losing my points lead, I'll get it back after a few more races. Well, back to work, until next time.......