Sunday Post Ride--TT Effort

And it begins...Still unable to find my Heart Rate Monitor. Sucks. I would've liked to know with some surety what was happening to my body while I was laying down a hard effort. Not to be. Too bad.

I clipped in with my Specailized MTB Epic Comp shoes into the Egg Beater pedals. Body Geometry gloves gripped the handle bar. If I'm gonna put ina hard effort, I might as well dress in full kit for it.

I did find my knee warms, safely tucked away in a previously worn shirt. How the missing knee warmer got there is...Your guess is as good as mine. Today I told myself I was going to do a Time Trial effort for the Mini Hammer (3N to 165 S to Arcadia Rd and back up Skunkhill). I started out strong. No warm up. Typically I never warm up, I know I should but I just don't...why tire yourself out before the race? Strangely enough, today I questioned myself about that.

I pushed off today from my driveway, almost immediately I wondered if should've thrown on another undershirt. The air although warm standing still had a chill only a cyclist would know. The type of chill that grabs your arms and won't let go until the 1st climb. Too late for that now. Its already later than I planned. I need to go now.

I'm motoring down my street away from my house, legs kicking over the cranks. I was underway. I'm feeling ok, especially at the start. I knew today I was going to put a hard effort. I told myself yesterday I would. TT Sunday I called it. I wanted to see if there was any improvement in my times, since I started the Mini Hammer over 3 weeks ago. So far so good, I reach Route 3 in under 4 minutes. I average 5 minutes. This is encouraging. It didn't last.

I'm part way up the 1st climb when I realize I need to re think the TT effort. I am crawling up Route 3. I'm slower than yesterday and nothing is feeling right, not legs, not lungs, nothing. Ok I tell myself, I'll do a focused effort or a hard effort. I resign my self to doing a focused effort, screw racing or personal TT. I'm gonna ride hard and with focus, which meant I'd turn the cranks as steadily as possible under a hard effort.

A couple of times I felt my heart jumping out of my mouth. I would've loved to have seen my max heart rate. I wasn't putting a race effort I was keeping the tempo high, high for me at this point. I wanted to beat 57 minutes. That was my mental goal: 57 minutes. I wasn't gonna count seconds here are there due to intersection crossings. Today it seemed like all the cars were on the Mini Hammer Loop.

Sorry folks...I'll have to cut this one short. I'm falling asleep on the keyboards. I did it though, beat 57 minutes. I hammered in at 48 minutes. For the 1st time this year, I was pleased. Maybe I would've been faster if I had warmed up. We'll See.

Ipod: Tool. "Prison Sex"