DOMS

There's an acronym for everything. That one happens to be Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness. Oddly enough, no one actually knows what causes DOMS. Muscle soreness during and immediately after exercise is the result of lactic acid that is produced under anaerobic conditions. Basically, your breathing/circulation can't keep up with your muscles' oxygen demand. That lactic acid is cleared out of the muscles and surrounding tissue within a matter of hours though, so it can't be the cause, and no other plausible explanation has been offered for the soreness you feel the day after a hard workout. Which, by the way is the point of this little physiology lesson. I hurt.

I was okay when I woke up this morning. Until I tried to move. Luckily, hungry outweighed sore and got me downstairs for breakfast, and I managed to work the worst of the kinks out pretty easily. I rode into school a bit slower than usual, but not too bad. And then I had a 5.5 hour lab class on my feet the entire time. By the end my legs were aching so badly I could hardly walk.

So, I ate lunch after lab, then registered for my next term, and then what did I decide to do? Go to the gym. Yeah, I'm brilliant. One heavy lifting workout later, and I limped home on my bike and am now curled up in bed and planning to not move again all night. Can't wait to see how bad the hurt is in the morning. Maybe I'll take tomorrow off.

The Pain Cave

A brief description of The Pain Cave by one of my favorite bloggers:

Sal and his cycling teammates talk about the “Pain Cave” a lot. It’s that place you go where you are enveloped by a complete and raw brand of pain. You reach it after feeling the seering inside of you and then ignoring it. You reach it when every voice inside of you has screamed for you to stop and you have silenced them all. The quiet of the pain cave is eerie and horrific.

It’s still but not calming. It’s excruciating and peaceful all at once. It’s simultaneously transcendent and brutally immediate. The agony is almost tangible.

It is the best and the worst feeling.

So, that's where I was for a much too short a time yesterday during the race. But I should start from the beginning. The group decided that since it was going to be the most daylight we'll have all year that the men would do 5 laps and the women would do 4. I'm sitting there thinking, "One lap almost killed me last time, how am I going to do 4?" But then they suggest that the first lap be neutral because there were enough new people that we didn't want anyone getting lost. So I think, "Okay, one lap will just be an easy warm up and then I can do the other three. No problem."

To put it bluntly, I was wrong. The neutral lap started off pretty easily, with the experienced racers showing the newbies how to ride a paceline. But once they got the paceline (sorta) down, things started to speed up just a little. Then a little more. Let's just say that our supposedly neutral lap averaged 18.5mph on an 9 mile course with 2500ft of climbing. That's pretty fast. I was starting to get left behind on the hills. So much for neutral.

As soon as we crossed the line to start lap #2, the experienced ladies just took off. I don't know how they can accelerate like that on hills, but all that mattered is that they could and I couldn't. I was completely and utterly shot off the back by the second hill. Which left me to do another individual time trial to try to catch back on. Someone else got dropped too, but she wasn't time trialling like I wanted to, so I passed her and did my best to keep the pack in sight. That's where I found my pain cave. Nothing hurts like chasing a group that's always just barely in sight. I couldn't gain any ground, but for about half a lap I didn't lose any ground either.

I did finally lose them when we hit the hilliest part of the course again. By then I had done some serious spelunking in my pain cave and was forced to back down because I knew the situation was hopeless and I really wanted to get in at least 3 laps. When I had almost finished lap #2 the other one that had been popped off on the hills caught me and we rode together for the third lap. I didn't have the energy or motivation to go for lap 4, especially because that would just force the other women to wait for us after they had finished.

So, it's time to do some even more serious goal revision. And some serious recovery. My legs are trashed.

Ouch

My ego got left somewhere along the side of the road tonight. The course was brutally hard, the other women are simply stronger and faster than me, and my stomach was cramping. Before the race started I was actually feeling pretty good, but I only managed to hang on for about 6 miles before the wind and hills completely overpowered me. I was the third to get dropped, so that's something at least. Sadly, I didn't finish the race. The stomach cramps turned nasty and I was choking back vomit on my last hill, so I decided that I had had enough. It was my first DNF, and hopefully my last.

I called Neil after I got home and he gave me some much needed encouragement. I'm revising my season goals from "podium placement" to "pack finish". I have to keep reminding myself that I'm racing way over my head with Cat 2 and 3's and they SHOULD be dropping me every race. At least I get a good workout on Tuesday nights. Oh, and one of the other women lives just down the street from me, so I now have a carpool to races. That alone almost makes tonight seem like a success.

My First Crit, or, How to Improve Your Cornering

I was very nervous for my first GVCC race. What if they're all faster than me? What if I don't like anyone? What if I make a fool of myself? Many bad scenarios got replayed in my head over and over again.

When I arrived I realized my first big mistake. I had hardly eaten anything since noon. It was now 6 and my body was used to eating every 3-4 hours. This was a big problem, but there wasn't much I could do about it. We rode around the course several times to warm up. It was a 0.6 mile loop, with only two real corners. One half was slightly downhill and the other half was slightly uphill and into a headwind. Within a lap or two I realized my second big mistake. My legs were toasted from the ride on Monday. Maybe that has something to do with the crazy headwinds, but I bet it also had to do with going out dancing and only getting 7 hours of sleep before my insane first day of class. Just maybe.

I did my best to work the kinks out of my legs, but they were having none of it. The muscles were sluggish and already burning on the uphill. The race was going to be 20 minutes plus 5 laps. We started with a few neutral laps, which were nice to continue trying to coax my legs into good behavior. It didn't work. Then the racing started. At first I was fine, in the middle of our small pack (only 10 women) and breathing hard but not dying. I lost some ground on the uphill each lap, but I always do. The difference this time is that I couldn't make it up on the the downhill. After about 3 laps I was dangling off the back, gasping for air. After 5 laps, the pack was barely even in sight around the corners.

There are few things more demoralizing than putting every ounce of energy you have into just clinging to the back of the pack, and then getting dropped anyway. But, I have the voice of Neil in my head telling me over and over again, "If you get dropped, it's still good training. Just keep riding." So I kept riding. For a little while I made futile efforts to get back to the pack, but I never gained any ground. At one point someone else got dropped and I spent the rest of the race chasing her. I never caught her, but I never let her gain ground on me either. I owe her a lot of thanks, because having someone visible in front of me was just enough motivation to keep me going.

Throughout the race I also got to practice high-speed cornering. Cornering and I are not comfortable with each other yet, but I figured I might as well make the best use of my solo training race and practice. I started out taking the corners at about 19-20mph, and by the end I was pretty confidently taking them at 25mph. I call that good practice.

At some point along the way I got lapped. That was about the point that my energy reserve kicked in. Or maybe I was just mad about being lapped. Either way, my speed picked up significantly. There were only a few laps to go by then, though, so it hardly mattered. Shana ended up winning the race, and I was shocked to find out that I hadn't actually finished last. Someone else who was racing a crit for the first time had been dropped before me. That was also when I found out that in the pack had been three Cat 3's and a Cat 2. I felt a little better after that.

That race wasn't fun. There's no way to twist it around and make it seem fun. I got shelled off the back, heartily embarrassed, and was suffering badly the whole time. Luckily, I was stubborn enough to keep riding. I think I earned some respect for that, even if my bad judgment and lack of fitness were blatantly obvious. Next week it's a regular road race, and my goal will be very simple and very modest: Finish with pack.

Even flat intervals hurt

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss hills. Hills force you to be honest and push hard. When the road is flat and there's no one to make you go hard except yourself, it's way too easy to cheat. I think this is going to be a problem in the future.

Luckily, it wasn't a problem today. The weather was so iffy for most of the afternoon and I was so antsy to get out and try the new roads that Todd showed me that when I finally got out there motivation was not an issue. I had all the motivation in that world and I was ready to go ride for an hour, hammer out some hard intervals, then ride for another hour back. That was the plan. Unfortunately, the wind had other ideas.

Wind is a normal problem, especially in flat areas, but today was a special kind of wind. It was blowing from every direction at once and when it decided to gust into my face it could knock 10mph off my speed. I was pushing into it as hard as I could and moving at about 12mph. I don't like wind.

So, when I got out to the area I had decided to explore (one of the race courses for GVCC) I was already more than warmed up. But, I was there, the sun was out, my iPod was ready and intervals awaited. I turn on the music (random play started with Kanye West - Glory, good choice for intervals) and start the suffering. Three minutes, flat out as hard as I could go. The first one is always the hardest. I chose to do nice intervals today, so I let myself recover completely. Then start up again for another three minutes. Repeat four times. By the time I had finished four, I was done. Well, my legs were done. I knew they'd get me home, but if I tried for a fifth or to go exploring bad things would happen. So I headed home.

I've gotta say, it felt really good to get out there and push myself to the limit again. I had the biggest, stupidest grin on my face as I was riding home. The wind was still going strong, but it had decided to stay at my back all the way home. Nothing like riding home at 25mph despite having trashed my legs. When I got off my bike my knees were wobbly and it hurt to walk up the stairs, exactly what I wanted to feel.

One more important note for today: That course is going to suit me perfectly in a race. It'll be a few weeks before we go out there, but I should be able to rock that course. I can just hope that the crit on Tuesday will be similar. I should probably work on my cornering for that crit, too. Hmmm... maybe tomorrow.