This week was… spectacularly awful. The kind of week where things don’t just go wrong, they detonate with commitment. If I say it ranks in my personal top ten of most stressful weeks, I’m not exaggerating. I wish I were.
Unsurprisingly, my training took a hit. Motivation evaporated. The idea of getting on the Kickr and being alone with my thoughts felt less like training and more like an unsupervised psychological experiment.
Rainbow Dash resurrection
On Tuesday, after dragging myself out of bed and wrapping myself in Lycra like an emotionally compromised burrito, I still wasn’t feeling it. Enter Marco, with a moment of genius: “Why don’t you go ride outside instead?”
And so, Rainbow Dash was summoned from neglect. My last ride on her was December 5th, which in bike terms is basically abandonment. She needed some TLC. Tires reinflated, new Terry saddle installed, Wahoo mount swapped for Garmin, and the severely worn out flat pedals finally retired in favor of power meter pedals. Because if there’s no data, did the suffering even occur?
After about an hour of high-level faffing, both the bike and I were marginally operational, so we headed out along one of my favorite routes by the Rhine.
The weather behaved… initially. Up to Möhlin, there was actual sunshine, which felt divine. After climbing the hill there, I got a clear view of what was coming next: a wall of rain that looked like it had personal grievances. I turned around, made a strategic stop at the bakery in Möhlin, and waited it out like a sensible human.
Post-pastry, conditions improved enough to tempt fate again, so I climbed the hill a second time and completed the route as planned. I resisted the urge to extend the ride, mainly because my Di2 battery was low. At this point, that’s less of an incident and more of a personality trait (evidence 1, evidence 2, evidence 3).
Mentally, the ride helped. It always does. There’s something about watching the world slide past that recalibrates things. Also, aggressively pushing VO2 max to conquer a hill provides a very efficient, if slightly dramatic, method of stress reduction: “This is fine. I’m fine. Oh wait, I’m not fine. I am actively dying! CO₂ narcosis imminent!!! WILL THIS HILL EVER END?! PLEASE. MAKE. IT. STOP…. Oh. Summit. I live.”
And suddenly, life is good again.
Weird physiology
I noticed something odd in my training data this week.
During my zone 2 rides, power stays stable, but my heart rate actually decreased over time. Negative cardiac drift, apparently. Which feels like the physiological equivalent of “I was stressed, but then I pedaled it out of my system.”
Given that I spent most of the week marinating in stress hormones, my working hypothesis is that the ride acted as a kind of involuntary detox. The sympathetic nervous system finally took a step back, and my heart rate followed.
Conclusion
Most of our gear for the Race Around the Netherlands is finally in place. The 1000k test ride is planned, which feels both reassuring and mildly threatening. All that’s left now is to keep training and ride the final test ride!
I’ll catch you at the next one. Until then, keep the rubber side down!