In the process of working on a piece that has been weighing on my mind since February I revisited this post . February seems like a million years ago now – how is that? Anyhow, in that post I discussed how I had lost my fear of the bike. Well, 4 months later not only do I no longer fear the bike, I anxiously await the first ride of the week which happens tomorrow.

I am pleasantly stunned by my fitness level and my new, more compact body. Instead of whining about how hard it is I am loving my committment to the plan. Saturday I had to figure out what to do to fulfilll my 3.25 hour ride and I thought about it and messed around so long I ended up going out alone. I climbed Diablo again but not to the top. Getting from the Junction to Juniper was harder than it had been a week ago, possibly because Thursday’s ride looked like this:

Not a lot of elevation but those hills are pretty sharp and we were moving at a decent clip.

Or maybe it was just the result of my ever increasing training volume which looks like this:

The scale on 2007 is different from 2008 so I had to squish down the chart and match the height of September 2007 to get that image (click to enlarge)

Anyhow, I knew I’d never make it up the cherry on top and without any peer pressure or the promise of a Snickers there just wasn’t any point. Besides it was getting hot and windy so I enjoyed the view at 3,000 feet for a few minutes and then headed back down. I got home 3 hours and 12 minutes after I left – perfect!

I’m really wondering how I managed to get through those Olympic distance races last year. I mean really wondering. I do recall showing up to T1 every single time thinking “well – I didn’t really train for this but I can do it”. There will be no more of THAT! Showing up to a race trained is way better. In fact, showing up for life trained is better.

Sunday I did a trail run with about 15 other people from FMRC. I was kind of trashed and I’m the slowest anyhow but it was okay. I whined for about 2 minutes then I laughed at myself for whining and then I just ran – except for the hills and when the hills went up I walked. No apologies and

Near as I can tell once you get past the whining zone and the pissed off zone you enter the awesome zone and I rather like it in here!