Ready for some R&R

Well, I'm coming up on the end of my second solid 4 week training block. Tomorrow marks the beginning of a recovery week after today's 12 mile tempo run. Everything feels great except for a bit of a stiff back from all the weights I've been throwing around right now (you would think I was competing for the 'World's Strongest Skinny Man' award by all the heavy dead lift and squat sets I'm doing this block). AND THANK GOD THE TEMPERATURE OUTSIDE HAS RISEN ABOVE zero.......on Wednesday I actually got a nasty nose bleed during a run from a frozen booger (running is so dangerous)!

Prison Break

Last night I did a 10 mile time trial indoors on my trainer to determine my threshold level at this point in the year. This is basically 20 minutes of balls out cycling. It doesn't sound like a long time, but after about 10 minutes everything on my body including my teeth are screaming 'ouch'!!! I averaged 312 watts, so that is a good starting point for the rest of the season.

After the time trial I headed into the Y for a lift session. I don't normally lift on a Saturday night, so I found the clientele there at that time of night is more like a scene from 'Shawshank Redemption'. I think I was the only dude there without a house arrest ankle bracelet on. One guy was kicking the bar, slapping himself, and yelling "All your hate!" to get 'psyched' for a set of dead lifts. After finishing his set, he promply went over to the sitting calf machine where he had way too much weight stacked on. He couldn't raise the weight with his calves more than a couple inches, but by the way he was screaming and the fact that his head and body were swaying back and forth made it look like he had his pecker stuck in the seat of the machine. Wanting to avoid getting shanked, I did my best not to laugh. So that was my Saturday night lifting session at the Y.... next time I'll bring a video recorder for you all!

A Little Inspiration

Last night before I hit the hay, I was surfing the web looking for the NCAA wrestling rankings and I came a across a quote that I really liked. The quote was on the white board of a college wrestling room and it read "TO GET WHAT WE'VE NEVER HAD, WE MUST DO WHAT WE'VE NEVER DONE". This quote could be applied to anything we set out to do in life, but it hit me especially hard as I begin to set goals for the coming racing season. Great achievments take an incredible amount of dedication....some may even look at it as an obsessive dedication. Anyone can work hard once in a while...anyone can get motivated for a month or two, but it's the day in and day out dedication 365 days a year that will get a person to the next level. I'm so inpired by those people that are able to juggle a career, a family, and a social life with the demands of training. These people do not make excuses, instead they make things happen. These people don't talk about what they could have done or who they could have beaten given more time to train, but instead they just go out and do it. To build a house, at some point in time you need to use a hammer....you have to pound through the days when the training is a drag...you have to push a little harder when the body is begging to slow down...and it's then that you will be given the opportunity to earn the thing you've never had.