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I’m once again tucked into the Red Roof Inn in Allentown, PA, once again on the eve of a race at the USA Cycling Cross Country Mountain Bike National Championships.  And how so much has changed in a year!

Last year I was apathetic and burnt out.  I had little desire to ride a bike, and mostly skated through the season successfully on good luck.  No training, and definitely no desire to ride at Bear Creek in all it’s rocky and rooty hellish glory.  Too many races, not enough riding, and and overwhelming desire to throw my mountain bike off a mountain and find a new hobby.

This year it’s not like that!  I’m not burnt out, and I don’t want to sell/harm all my bikes!  Though I am kind of thankful that I have a few weeks to just goof around and stop worrying about everything being full throttle before ‘cross season, I still want to get on my bike.  And Bear Creek?  I’m kicking her ass.  I’m tackling so many sections that I couldn’t ride last year, and am staying in harder gears.  The climbs feel easier, and I feel like I’m riding with a vengeance to teach that damn ski resort mountain a thing or two!

But the biggest surprise is that I still don’t care how I do.  I mean, I do.  Of course.  But I don’t mean apathy like last year either.  I’m the type that will drive themselves crazy with pre-registration lists, researching my competition, looking at Strava, already deciding race results in my head before I’m even at the race.  It’s HORRIBLE.  I read a good article by Selene Yeager about the things she wish she had known when she first started racing: Letter to my Younger Self.  And I realized I had some self destructive race behaviors going on.

Focus on yourself. Stop checking BikeReg for “who’s registered.” You’ve been training to be the best you can personally be. That might mean you win. That might mean you come in midpack or dead last. Be your best and be good with whatever that means. And believe in yourself. It doesn’t matter if a former World Champion is on the line or if the field is full of relative unknowns. It’s a race, and on any given day, the win is up for grabs. Believe you can grab it no matter who else is going for it. – Selene Yeager

I like that part the most.  This year at Bear Creek and at Nationals means conquering those goddamn rocks in my own monster trucking, swear word yelling ways (I’m a strong believer in the dirtier names you call a rock garden, the higher the chance of cleaning it!).  Dammit, I can ride drops.  Dammit, I can ride rock gardens.  Dammit, I can ride wet roots.  I’ve already seen the difference a year makes during my 4 practice laps (2 in the rain, 2 in the dry).  I’m cleaning stuff I never thought I would.  Suddenly Bear Creek doesn’t seem intimidating.  Sure, there’s a few sections that I just can’t ride, partly mentally and partly because I just don’t have the skills (yet).  But otherwise, I am surprising the piss out of myself this year, and that’s only been practice!  Am I the fastest Cat 2 30-39 women signed up?  Doubtful.  Am I the slowest?  Doubtful (yes, I still did a tiny bit of research.. ahem).  But am I beating myself?  Hell yeah!  I think for the first time I’ve learned to race my own race.  There’s a total of 4 of us racing tomorrow, so we’ll all be on the podium.  I’ll have a shiny piece of hardware in some color to bring home, show around to people, and to brag about and take photos with because it still is a great accomplishment to make the commitment to drive across the country and race at a national championship, and tomorrow afternoon I’ll submit my upgrade request for Cat 1 MTB/Cat 3 cyclocross.  But I already feel like I’m winning because I chose to return to a super hard course that I swore last year I wouldn’t return to, and I’m kicking her ass, bit by bit!

I’ve had quite the adventurous week, and I do hope to have some blog posts result from it, if anything just to chronicle my adventures for my elderly self.  I took my first Cat 2 win at FORC Side Thrill Ride in Davenport, IA which was awesome, and a good kickstart coming into Nationals, so perhaps there will be a race report for that as well!

It’s once again May 15th – my anniversary of beginning to ride a bike (as an adult).  Some days it feels like May 15, 2012 was a million years ago, some days it feels like it was yesterday.  And here I am, wrapping up year two of this crazy journey I’ve been on, still turning the pedals over and over.

Some days I wonder when my attention span will run out.  When will turning those pedals over and over not be fun?  When will l finally get fed up of always looking like I was in a bar room brawl with my knees and elbows?  When will I mentally break down and decide I can’t spend another minute training for something where there will always be someone that much faster?  When will I finally realize that my bikes are becoming more and more related to that ol’ race car project sitting in the garage – the chase for lighter, “better” components, this type of carbon fiber for that type of carbon fiber, the swiping of already tired out credit cards?

And yet my motivation surprisingly remains there.  It’s a part of life. It’s really no longer about weight loss and the physical fitness – I won’t lie that I’m 10 pounds heavier at this present moment than I was 1 year ago, and about the same weight as when I swung my leg over that bike 2 years ago (though easy to argue that the makeup of my body has dramatically changed).  The hours on the trainer busting out intervals are so ingrained in my routine that I’m continuing them through the outdoor riding season.  I crave the next opportunity I have to get on my bike, to make my heart feel like it’s going to explode, that uncomfortable tingling feeling in my legs that tells me I’ve pushed my muscles to the max, to feel my lungs struggle for every oxygen molecule.  Hell, it’s not a craving its an addiction.  I’m an addict chasing her next high, whether it’s on pavement, gravel, single track, or rocks.  To feel my physical being ripped apart by demanding it to do things that perhaps aren’t really meant for an average women at age 30 to do.

Mentally I realized that I can make myself do more things than I thought possible.  I still struggle with the mental game, knowing that my brain shuts my legs down far before anything physical does, but the excuses remain.  Mental weakness isn’t easy to admit.  I’m still chasing the demons that plague me – my brain not being able to cope with the 195bpm heart rate, the stinging in my legs, the fact that hills just suck, that this rock drop could paralyze me, and that falling hurts a lot. But the demons don’t win as often.  They get shut down a lot quicker these days.  And when they get the best of me, I’m one pissed off gal.  Almost a year later, and I’m finally coming to terms with what happened at the Laramie Enduro, and I fully recognize that that was a mental failure, not physical, and dammit, I want to do that damn race again just to prove that I can finish it, whether I’m crying or not.

Personal opinions of the man aside, one of my favorite quotes is Lance Armstrong and this: “Every world class athlete is running from something.  Every one is pushing to get somewhere else.”  I’m not close to being a world class athlete and probably will never be, but I am running from stuff.  Cycling is my therapy.  Whether is pedaling out the stress of my career as a nurse, pedaling out the anger of failed relationships and friendships, the frustration of always being pulled in different directions, pedaling out all the times people have told me I can’t do something or that I shouldn’t do something… it’s just me and that 20-something pound hunk of carbon, metal, and rubber.  I’ll have big mental conversations with myself, I’ll curse and swear, I’ll cry.  And usually 95% of the time I get off the bike feeling better.  That’s something I didn’t have a few years ago, and perhaps that is one of the better things cycling has done for me, giving me a change to work through the mentally challenging aspects of my life in a positive manner when so many others may turn to self destructive means.

Rambling aside, here I am, pedal over pedal.  Still at it.  I didn’t know two years ago what today would be like.  I was just planning on putzing around on that heavy mountain bike, maybe losing some weight, and giving me something fun to do on the weekends.  I didn’t know that two years from the very day I’d go pound out a “short” afternoon road ride on my pretty sweet black and pink carbon road bike, get a Strava QOM or two, and be planning some crazy 80-mile adventure for the weekend.  I didn’t know that I’d be looking forward to racing in Iowa later in the summer, or hopping barriers at cyclocross in the fall, or planning the big step up to Cat 1 mountain bike racing.  I guess that’s the beauty in it all, I didn’t set out cycling with any sort of idea in mind about what the future would hold.  When I built the magical race car of mine, the goal for the future was already set in stone and there were expectations to withhold, and that’s the been the perk to cycling… though there might be goals, there’s no one set “must accomplish” thing.  I go with the flow and see what new experiences arise.

So here’s to the start of year 3, to new experiences, new scars, hopefully no new rear derailleurs!

I’ve turned the pedals (give or take a smidge) 4,175 miles in these two years and have 341 rides uploaded to Strava, for some fun facts!  My longest ride remains 100.3 miles, which was the 2013 Ride for Sight Century.  I’ve owned 7 bikes in this time, and have only sold one, which ironically is the very first bike I bought, my ’12 Giant Rainier.  It was also the only bike that wasn’t Specialized, go figure.  I’ve only gotten rid of two pairs of bike shorts, and that’s because they got so baggy from weight loss they wouldn’t stay up.  And it took me up until last month to finally agree to try tubeless mountain bike tires.  To top it off, I’ve made so many awesome friends that I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t a crazy cyclist.  So there’s that!  

DONE, DONE, and DONE!  My CritFit 18 Week Pre-Season Plan wrapped up last week before I headed out for mud wrestling  my first mountain bike race of the year.  18 weeks of sweating it out on the trainer, staring at the power numbers on TrainerRoad, sometimes feeling strong, sometimes wanting to bang my head on the wall.

Overall, I’m happy with how my training went.  During Phase 2 I did struggle, legs felt dead and motivation was at an all time low.  It was February and the weather was dreary and all I wanted to do was ride outside.  It was a task to stay motivated and drag myself onto the trainer.  Then I came down with bronchitis which threw training off for about two weeks.  For Phase 3 I came back and attacked, with a heavy balance of outdoor and indoor riding I had motivation again.

The big news is that increased my functional threshold power (FTP) from an initial 195 watts back in November to 217 with my test yesterday!  22 watt increase, woohoo!  CritFit works, there’s no denying!  There’s also no denying that structured training with interval workouts works… wait, that’s CritFit… I digress!  Training with power is also the way to go, so thanks to TrainerRoad for that great software to allow this to happen without the big bucks being dropped on a power meter!

Fortunately, the training hasn’t stopped!  My work schedule doesn’t really afford me the time to go outside and ride for hours and hours, so I wanted to stick to two or three days a week on the trainer keep up my fitness, if not continue to build it over the season.  So I am now doing the CritFit 8 Week In-Season Race Plan (ISP), which cycles between blocks of threshold, VO2 max, and tempo workouts along with racing on the weekends (with some finagling for weeks I have weekday races).  I start next week (I took this week as a week to test and do some road and mountain riding unstructured) and 8 weeks will bring me up to the end of June, and then it’s only about two weeks until Nationals.  (EEEK, that makes it seem so close!).  Here’s to the continuation of the solid foundation I built!

Initially I was going to swap some stuff around on my CritFit PSP 18 Week training plan so the recovery week scheduled for Week 17 would fall on Week 18 leading up to my mountain bike season opener… but life and the weatherman have a way of throwing a curve ball, and I took my Week 17 recovery week as scheduled… Forecast called for temperatures in the 60-80s for nearly the whole week.  And that means one thing when combined with a new mountain bike raring to go:  trail time!

Four trips to Colorado later, almost 70 miles biked, and some dark cyclist tan lines later, I still can’t wipe the smile off my face!  It has been an amazing week on my bike!

Last Monday Gretchen and I hit up Blue Sky Trail in Fort Collins, taking an easy spin on the perfect trails for about 11 miles.  This was my first real ride on my new Specialized S-Works Fate, and WOW.  Just wow.  The bike is AMAZING.  AMAZING (in case you didn’t get it).  I haven’t felt this connected to the trails in so long.  Fast enough I can easily kill myself, to say the least.  Fast, and snappy.  Can’t even describe it… I told Gretchen that there would only be one part that I wanted to hammer – the “Blue Sky Climb” segment that takes you from the south valley to the top to the Rim Rock junction.  This climb has been a nemesis of mine since the first time I had to push my Giant Rainier up it in January 2013.  I took off and realized I wasn’t in the granny gear.  Nowhere near it.  The bike and I flew up the hill, with only a few second bobble on some loose dirt.  When I got home and could upload my file to Strava I realized I knocked a minute off my best time (and minutes and minutes off my original time when I pushed the bike) and broke into 8th place out of 92 women.  Holy crap…!!! To break the Top 10, let along Top 20/50, on a Colorado segment to me is crazy with all the talent down there… Georgia, I’m coming for you!!  haha!

Tuesday was suppose to be some sort of “epic” 25 mile loop around Horsetooth Reservoir, but I suck at finding Shoreline Trail coming off Maxwell.  So that ate up time, and an hour later Jim and I realized we had only gone 5.5 miles.  So we decided to explore more of the Reservoir Ridge area trails, and descended down Michaud.  Which was the moment I realized I still need my full suspension Epic!  As rocky and cruel as that descent was, I realized it would be perfect training ground for the conditions of the Nationals course in PA, given I was riding the proper bike.  The Fate did handle the terrain like a champ considering its rider was not use to a hard tail and 80mm of travel.  Still another great day on the trails in 75 degree weather under sunny skies, regardless of the drastic change in the plans (no photos from that day… sad).

Yesterday on Friday I hit up Blue Sky Trail again for what I would call one of my first “training” mountain bike rides of the year.  Which means hammer time.  Time to put the Fate, my training, and myself to the test.  South on Blue Sky I went (after running into racing buddy Teryn at the trailhead… ahhhhhh so giddy to see all my racing buddies again!!!) to Indian Summer which I did two laps of, and back north on Blue Sky to the Tower Trail junction and then back to the car.  Just a bit over 19 miles (recovery week schmrecovery week).  I felt strong and connected to the bike.  I had changed out my front tire to a Specialized Ground Control as I find the Fast Traks wash out too easy in corners, and this changed my confidence completely.

When I started up the switch backs on Indian Summer I noticed immediately the changes in myself.  That was always a granny gear grind for me, but now I was steadily pushing the bike along in a much harder gear.  Though I did see heart rates in the 180s, it just felt better.  Suddenly the 17 weeks spent punishing myself on the trainer in the basement, the freezing road rides, and even the sketchy road racing experiences was all worth it.  I had the proof of the results.  That’s all I wanted… proof.  Proof doesn’t necessarily mean podium wins and races results as I can’t control who I race against yet.  To me, this was the proof I needed… just myself and my bike, chugging up the Indian Summer switchbacks effortlessly.  I found the combination… a little bit of training and the perfect lightweight racing bike.  The motivation came back to me.  I finally could see what a little bit of training could do (as I wasn’t on an extreme training plan… my goal was 4 hours a week).

I nearly cried in joy when I uploaded the ride to Strava.  There were the numbers, the proof.  Even with stops to yield to other trail users, to adjust my new shoes, or to get some chews I blew away all my previous PRs.  I knocked 3, 4, 5, 6 or more minutes off my times.  And to think this wasn’t quite race pace!  I found myself consistently in the Top 40 (with some Top 20 appearances) on the segments.  Heck, I almost wanted to get on the trainer and do more intervals because I was so jazzed over what CritFit and my coach had allowed me to accomplish in 17 short weeks!

Finally today I wrapped up my Recovery Week to End All Recovery Weeks with a 21 mile jaunt in Soapstone Prairie with a few friends from MTBR.  I can’t believe I haven’t made it out to Soapstone Prairie yet!  This is an open space with about 50 miles of trails that lays on the Colorado/Wyoming border (one trail actually loops into Wyoming).  It’s free, not crowded, and a blast!  The single track exceeded my expectations, and I loved how it’s a place where a person can go pound out long miles on smooth, fast trails.  We looped up Pronghorn to Mahogany, and then across Canyon Trail to Cheyenne Rim, which we descended down back to the cars.  Skies remained cloudy (we are under a Winter Storm Warning… yes, 77 degrees to 5″ of snow at the flip of a switch), but temperatures stayed in the 60s which made for good riding weather.  Soapstone is very much exposed prairie, so I can imagine it’s not so much fun in the heat and sun.

How am I feeling?  Cooked.  Lots of miles on a mountain bike this week and I am having to readjust to getting bounced and jostled around more than my body is use to.  But I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a week off my trainer and away from intervals!  We in the Rocky Mountains have been blessed with amazing weather this week, and I think it all helped us shake off some of the cabin fever we were suffering from!

This coming week is Week 18.  The final week of the pre-season training plan.  Game over!  I have 3 days of intervals on the trainer (45 minutes to an hour for each workout), which I’m moving ahead to start on Monday so I’ll have Thursday as a full recovery day off the bike before heading out to Fruita for Rumble at 18 Road on Friday morning.  Then it’s show time!  It’s all come down to this… I am nervous about my first USAC Cat 2 race, which is funny considering in non-sanctioned races I have raced intermediate/advanced for a year which is the same thing as Cat 2 practically (if not reaching into Cat 1 a smidge with some of the people I have/will race against)…  I’m trying to keep things in perspective and remind myself its the first race, and last year I didn’t hit peak form until May and June, and to expect a similar trend this year (except with a bigger peak for Nationals in July.  I gotta make Bear Creek my bitch).  I’m competitive as all get out, but I think training has taught me to turn more inwards in my goals and away from medals and race results.  I just want to smash my Rumble at 18 Road race time to pieces.  PIECES.  Last year was a horror show, and that isn’t happening this year!

This week also allowed me to put a lot of new products to the test that I’ll have to work on raving about… my S-Works Fate, my new Specialized Motodiva shoes, Osmo hydration mix, Honey Stinger Waffles, new SockGuy socks, Giro Xara helmet… so much new to rave about!  Gotta have something to break up all the race reports that will be coming soon enough… stay tuned!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted… well, since the Carter Lake road race.  It finally felt like I had training back under control after what seemed to be a disastrous start to my CritFit Phase 2 plan.  And then of course life struck.  Life and the springtime crud that had been going around amongst my co-workers.  For the beginning of March I had planned a road trip to Fruita and Moab in hopes of getting back some mountain biking skills.  The Frostbite TT snowed/iced out (and was rescheduled for a day I couldn’t make it), so west I headed to Fruita with a scratchy throat and fever, trying to ignore what I knew was happening.  Breathing hurt, my body hurt, etc.  I still managed 17 miles at the Kokopelli trails followed by another 23 miles in Moab on the pathway and some of the Brands trails (where I had my first instance of an asshole not yielding to me and then proceeding to wreck his bike into me even though I had stopped off the side of the trail…).  That did me in… I awoke on that Monday morning feeling like absolute crap and couldn’t barely move.  The drive back to Cheyenne didn’t do me any favors with the elevation changes and sinus congestion.  Sucks to have gone all the way to Moab and not really do any riding 😦  But the riding I did do managed to push all the yuckiness deeper into my lungs, causing what I believed to be bronchitis.

I did feel awesome on the mountain bike aside from the extreme amounts of mucus and lack of ability to breathe.  My technical skills seemed to be the sharpest they’ve been in awhile, which is good because for this time of year I seem to be usually battling confidence issues.

Needless to say, training went way off course these past two weeks.  Combination of being sick and once again life stuff.  I managed a road ride outdoors a few days after Moab and a mountain bike ride on Blue Sky earlier this week.  And then magically, bam, I was feeling better about this past Thursday.  Mucus clogs all gone.  So bring on a race!

I signed up for the Oredigger Classic Hill Climb put on by the CO Schools of Mines today.  Pretty simple – individual time trial hill climb up Lookout Mountain in Golden, CO.  4.5 miles, and my Garmin told me 1400 feet of climbing.  It was cold, cloudy, and windy.  I didn’t think the wind was that bad until about halfway up the mountain when I turned a corner and nearly was stopped by the headwind.  I’m not sure I put in 100% effort (my cough reappeared, there’s my excuse.  Yep, excuse!), and I had a lot of people pass me it seemed from my class.  But I still enjoyed myself and think it was a good effort considering the craziness of the past few weeks.  I actually liked the climb up Lookout Mountain – it’s a gradual climb with only a few parts I’d say were “steep.”  No grinding at a slow cadence in the granny gear, instead very spinable and I even got out of my granny gear several times!  I’d like to redo it on a less windy day when my lungs are back to normal!  Luckily I packed my wind jacket so I could throw that on for the descent, which was one cold experience!  And scary at times due to the wind, so I kept it pretty sane.  No results are up yet (which ehhh… kinda weird considering the simplicity of a time trial, they weren’t even posted at the event), so I’m not quite sure how I did.

Tomorrow I am planning a few hours on the road bike just to get back into the groove.  Phase 3 of my training plan starts on Monday, and it’s the final push to the opening of mountain bike season at Rumble at 18 Road.  My threshold and VO2 max workouts will now be 3 days a week, which might be challenging since I was struggling doing 2 of them a week this past phase.  But I know I just need to mentally buckle down and not try to throw away everything that I have done so far up until this point.  I also have some more road events planned, if anything just for the excuse to put those miles in on weekends I have off of work.

I do have some new exciting goodies coming to help motivate me back onto the bikes!  I ordered a SRAM Force 22 group set for my road bike which I am absolutely excited for as I think I’ll finally have the Ruby where I want it (no more upgrade-itis???).  The good part of this means I’ll have shifters to complete my original Crux frame that I cannibalized for the S-Works frame, so I will have a pit bike for cross season.  A few weeks ago I upgraded the S-Works Crux with SRAM Force front and rear derailleurs and Avid Ultimate Shorty canti brakes.  I have Force crank arms waiting to go on as soon as new chainrings are in.  All the take offs can finally go back on the original Crux, and I now have the S-Works represented by more respectable parts, haha.  To top it off, on its way to me is a 2013 Specialized S-Works Fate!!!!  I am soooooo excited!  It was the last one available in my size, so I managed to fetch a good deal.  I’ve always wanted to own an S-Works bike and here it is!  Now, of course the bike far exceeds my cycling capabilities, but I’m hoping I can do it some sort of justice!  I’ve been wanting a hard tail for awhile now.. nothing against my Epic, it’s also an amazing bike, but after months of riding a cross bike I hate having rear suspension when it’s not needed.  The Fate will probably become my primary race bike as I simply do not race on enough trails that NEED full suspension (I think the Gowdy Grinder and nationals in PA might be the only ones for this year, and maybe the Death Crotch descent LMBS race).

A few months ago I saw requests on social media for participants for a research study on bone density over the course of a competitive cyclist’s race season.  Since it was just a quick jaunt down to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, I sent off volunteering to be a subject in the study and was accepted as a participant.

Wait, now why would bone density be decreased in cyclists?  We’re crazy active and have crazy big leg muscles, right?  That got my curious scientific mind thinking, and I realized that cycling probably doesn’t count as a weight bearing activity in the sense weight lifting would be… and competitive cycling eats away at you over the course of a season, mentally AND physically.  And then aren’t we all about carbs?  (Well, at least I am, though I do drink a lot of cow’s milk, which is actually not seemingly popular among cyclists.)

From the official research blurb:

Bone Mineral Density (BMD) has been shown to be drastically decreased in competitive cyclists.  Lower BMD can lead to an increase in risk for broken bones, fractures and other serious skeletal system issues.  This study’s purpose would be to asses the associated  BMD changes over a competitive cycling season.  A few things that we are also interested in looking at is dietary calcium intake and other physical activities cyclists engage in during the competitive season.  A DEXA scan would be used to look at BMD, body fat %, lean body mass % and other body composition measures.  The dietary analysis is a food log that would allow us to investigate calcium ingestion and other nutrient needs.

Today I had my first visit to CSU’s Human Performance Clinical Research Laboratory for my initial DEXA scan and to pick up my food log.

Anybody whose done some reading of my long-winded “training is so awesome” blog posts the past few months has seen my love of TrainerRoad and how I think it’s almost as awesome as deciding to start training in general!  Well, my love of the site/program has lead me to be chosen as a TrainerRoad Brand Ambassador!

How freakin’ awesome?!

Now I get to spread my obsessive love of TrainerRoad in an official capacity, mahahah 🙂  What’s even better is I have a whole load of promo codes to give out to those interested.  They’re good for $10 off… and since TrainerRoad is $10/month, that means a free month to try it out and see how it changes your training, or gives you a taste of power numbers, or just keeps you on your path!  If interested in a promo code, please reply in the comments with your contact info so I can send you a code!   (As of the end of March I am out of free promo codes.  Sorry everyone!)

Another awesome perk I am discovering from being a TrainerRoad Brand Ambassador is getting to connect with my fellow Ambassadors and follow their lives.  A good majority of them are triathletes, and reading their blogs and race reports are both inspiring and putting bad ideas in my head!  Good thing I have that whole fear of open water thing going on… but I digress 🙂  I’ve added a few links to their blogs over on the right side under my blogroll!

And how’s my Phase 2 training going?  Horrible, but that’s for another post for another day…

Well, I mean I do eat.  Lots.  I’ve always been on the “see food, must eat it” diet my entire life.  Which worked when I was younger, made me chubby when I was older, and something I can “get away” with now since I’m on a bike a lot.  But as for having a good, nutritionally balanced diet?  That’s been a struggle… and something I feel I need to work on since I’m putting in hours training.

My biggest roadblocks to eating better are:

• Laziness:  It’s just so easy to eat out, or microwave something weird and sketchy out of the freezer isle.
• Lack of desire to cook:  My mom is an AMAZING cook and LOVES cooking.  She often laments about how I didn’t pick up on this trait from her.  It’s not that I’m a bad cook that burns houses down or ruins food, it’s just that I lack a desire to cook anything.  My cooking range is making spaghetti, a few crock pot soups, and a veggie/angel hair salad.  Oh, and mac n’ cheese and potatoes.  And instant rice.  yeah…
• Work:  This is probably just a bad excuse, and really just falls into the laziness category.  I work night shift, and between 11pm-12am I wander down to the cafeteria, order me up a buffalo crispy chicken wrap, and then proceed to grab whatever else I can find while that’s cooking.  And then I seem to just eat to pass the slower morning hours.
• Impulse eater:  See work cafeteria!  Ooo cake, oooo soup, oooo parfait, oooo candy, oooo everything in sight, must eat!
• “Good” food goes bad:  Veggies and fruit start to rot if you don’t eat them.  A box of Cheese-Its does not.  Not that that is a problem, I’ll eat a box in two sittings…

I decided to order me up some cookbooks for endurance athletes, and to try my luck.  I was looking for easy recipes, and stuff that I can cook and then refrigerate/freeze for meals for work (or just when I’m home) so I can avoid the cafeteria.  The cookbooks both talk about nutrition strategies and also ways to make cooking easier, such as cooking some foods ahead and freezing so they’re on hand.

I browsed the books and made a shopping list for some of the stuff I wanted to try right away.  It was the most stressful shopping trip I’ve made, LOL!

Once I hauled my bounty into the house I took to cooking 10 boneless chicken breasts for freezing.  I hit a good sale for $1.99/pound, which made them a whole lot cheaper than the pre-cooked/pre-frozen varieties you can buy.  I’m not the biggest fan of chicken; honestly, it grosses me out, especially uncooked.  Quick phone call to consult with my mom (help, I don’t know what I’m doing with my chicken!), and tips from Facebook friends (yay social media in times of crisis), I successfully ended up with 10 cooked chicken breasts flavored with various combos of spices (4 with Italian seasoning, 1 with Italian and red peppers, 1 with chili powder and then sliced, and 4 with salt/pepper).

Process: put on a baking sheet with foil.  Seasoned how preferred.  Filled baking sheet with about a 1/4″ of water.  Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

I bought the ingredients to make some sweet potato & egg burritos that I plan on freezing for work and home, but then I fell asleep.  These past few days I’ve been exhausted, and sleeping only a few hours at a time (thank goodness it’s a recovery week on my training plan, so I haven’t been having to force myself onto the bike or skip any workouts), so the fact that I fell asleep at 3pm until 11pm wasn’t too strange.  So I took to cooking my planned dinner at 11:30pm since I figured I’d be up (I work the next 3 nights, so I need to sleep all day tomorrow anyway!).

I didn’t choose a recipe from the cookbooks, though it is similar to one found in Feed Zone Cookbook.  

Italian Orzo and Beef Stuffed Peppers  (from delish.com)
Serves 4
Total Time 35 minutes

4 large bell peppers, halved lengthwise and seeded (I used yellow ones as I’m not a fan of green)
Non stick spray
1/2 cup orzo pasta
8 ounces lean ground beef
1 cup chopped onion
2 teaspoons each fennel seeds and oregano
1 can (14.5oz) diced tomatoes with garlic
1/2 cup diced mozzarella (I subbed in grated cheddar and mozzarella)
Garnish with chopped basil

1. Heat broiler.  Line a rimmed baking sheet with nonstick foil.  Put peppers cut side down in pan; coat peppers with nonstick spray.
2.  Broil 12 minutes, turning once, until lightly charred and tender.  Reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees.
3.  Meanwhile bring a medium pot of lightly salted water to a boil.  Add orzo and cook as package directs; drain.
4.  While pasta cooks, coat a large nonstick skillet with nonstick spray; heat over medium heat.  Add beef, onion, fennel seeds and oregano.  Cook 6 minutes, breaking up meat, until beef is browned and onions are tender.  Remove from heat.
5.  Add orzo, tomatoes with their juices, and mozzarella to skillet; toss to mix, then fill peppers.  Bake 5 minutes or until cheese melts.  Sprinkle with basil.

 

 

 

My thoughts?  Yummy!  I’ve only had my mom’s Mexican-style variant of stuffed peppers, so this was a nice change.  And since I used yellow peppers, I actually ate the pepper, too!  One thing I would change for the next time I made them is using only 2 peppers since I am just cooking for myself.  Then I’ll have extra stuffing to go on the side.  I ate two halves, and then packaged up the rest in the fridge for my meals at work this weekend!

What I am struggling with right now is the portion size.  My brain feels like I didn’t eat nearly enough food, yet my stomach is satisfied.  At this moment I want to raid the brownies in the kitchen and scour the fridge.  So I do have baby carrots and snap peas on hand for moments like this, but I think it’ll be a process of mentally untraining myself from just eating tons and tons.

So we’ll see…

This is probably a duh to most people.  Put work in = get more out.  Yet a few months ago I was very hesitant on how much structured training could help me, and if I could stay motivated (I lose interest in things quickly sometimes) and if I would see a lot of improvement.

Back in November I took the plunge and did a preliminary Functional Threshold Power (FTP) test and started the CritFit 18 week pre-season training plan.  I had a good initial two weeks, and then life got crazy.  I started working night shift and bought/closed/moved into my house, which ate up a lot of time.  Training plan went out the window, but I knew I would refocus around the time of the Colorado state cyclocross championships in mid-December.  And that I did!

Suddenly I went from being the girl who treated the trainer as a torture device not to be ridden more than 30 minutes to a girl that appreciated what it would do for me and a device meant to be ridden for at least an hour or more.  Every week I met my CritFit Score goals with my threshold intervals, even if it meant sacrificing an extra hour of sleep before work.  Finally giving TrainerRoad a shot, I fell in love with training with power, and finally felt myself getting a bit stronger week by week.  TrainerRoad also provided a good format for me to create custom workouts around my CritFit Workouts of the Day, and also provided me structured workouts for recovery and endurance days, AND even better, a nice structured way to do Sufferfest videos around my power levels.  Whew.  So much good in a mere 6 weeks!

The #1 best thing I did for my 2014 season was start a training plan in general.  But nearly #1 as well was making the switch to power-based training.  I’m a number nerd, and once I actually figured out power (which really isn’t bad), I was just flat out in love.  I struggled with my 2-3 weeks of heart rate training, as I figured out I could control my heart rate in a myriad of ways and I struggled with my threshold heart rate being 165, which feels like nothing to me on a bike, especially after a season of racing cyclocross at 190+ bpm for 40 minutes at a time.  It just didn’t feel like I was working out.  Better than nothing?  Sure!  But with the awesome tools provided by TrainerRoad, which uses trainer type, an ANT+ stick, and my Garmin speed/cadence sensor to determine power, I could easily revamp my training to make myself think I was doing something in a manner than isn’t as easily controlled as heart rate.

Ways in which I realized heart rate based training wasn’t for me:
1.  If I sit up on the bike or drink water, heart rate jumps.  And my heart rates are naturally lower while in the TT position than on the road bike.
2.  I often mentally picture races in my mind during intervals, coming across the finish line in a good sprint and taking the win.  This won’t change my power output, but it makes my heart rate get all crazy out of excitement.  Luke Bryan songs on Pandora also has this effect.
3.  I can control my heart rate through breathing scary well.  I discovered this while being hooked up to a telemetry (aka heart) monitor at work one day and focusing on the screen.  I can will myself into a 40 bpm resting heart rate as well as will myself to make it higher through breathing.

Anyways, I digress.  Enough with that tangent….

So my 6 weeks of Phase 1 Threshold training seemingly flew by, and my last 3 cyclocross races actually fit in well with the plan, with a lower CritFit score week falling on the week of Nationals so I could “take it easier.”  Last week was the final week, and I was feeling like an utter beast – so much so I found myself riding my 12-minute length threshold intervals in the bottom of my VO2Max power range with a smile on my face.  Who smiles on a trainer?!  Fast forward to this week, which was a recovery week.  Something mentally challenging as I got so use to a routine of two days a week doing CritFit WODs, and fitting in rides in between for endurance.  And… it also meant my FTP re-test to check in on how training has been going.

Gulp.

I was nervous going into last night.  I had a fear I would put out less power, or the same.  Irrational, perhaps.  But it was nerve-wracking.  This time I chose the road bike, which I had been doing all my training on (instead of the TT bike), and Coach T decided we should use my trainer as well instead of his.  Painful as always, but yet the first 8-minute block immediately showed an increase in power.  I had a slight slip of will-power/shut up legs moment around 6 minutes in, but finished strongly.  The second 8 minute block didn’t go so well.  Legs were dead, though I did keep it above the power put out in my original FTP test in November.  Once again 6 minutes in I faltered, and came close to not pedaling a few times as Coach T urged me to stop doing that.  It was painful.  Was it more mental than physical I do not know.  I had the strangest feeling of claustrophobia come over me for some reason, and Coach T’s coaching was actually really distracting me.  Weird, I know.  But because I was so cooked, I couldn’t form words to tell him and my legs to shut up, so I took to waving my right hand all weirdly at him every time he tried to get me to up my power.  Spastic, I am.  I’m sure he had no idea what the hell I was doing (sorry, Coach T, haha).  Not that I didn’t appreciate it, as it’s helpful, I was just in odd place mentally.  I mean, there’s nothing weirder than grunting awkwardly on a bike for 8 minutes way into your VO2Max power levels in a middle of a busy bike shop.

All animal grunting noises and awkward right hand waving aside, I upped my FTP by 10 watts!!!!!  HOLY CRAP TRAINING ACTUALLY WORKS, and even better, CritFit coaching is the best!  Just six weeks of focused training, and I accomplished that increase, woohoo!  Coach T remarked that I probably did not increase my FTP over the entire course of 2013, so to pull off that increase this early in the game is awesome.  My threshold heart rate also went from 165 to 170bpm, showing a gain in fitness.

So what’s coming up next… Phase 2.  Another 6 week long block, but this time focusing on VO2Max training and more pain.  I’m a bit of a guinea pig for a mixed phase of CritFit Billats for VO2Max, and threshold intervals workouts my other WOD day.  (The PSP 18 week plan is billats + VO2Max intervals.)  I’ll retest at the end of Phase 2, and then head into the final Phase 3, which is focused workouts based on my primary discipline (Cat 2 XC).