Personally, I find indoor bike time trials to be one of the most painful tests of fitness. They’re worse than a 5k. The first 5 minutes are usually ok, and then all hell breaks loose as you try not to lose the wattage that you’ve averaged but your heart can’t seem to pump hard enough to get blood to both your legs and your brain. By continuing to pedal with all your might you force the blood south and start to see spots as a result. When you finally hit the “finish line”, every muscle, including some not generally associated with cylcing, is toast. The nice part is that, while extremely taxing and vomit-inducing, the pain is relatively short lived and there is little resulting soreness. You complete the event, and get to cool down. Maybe do a steady workout later on. The pain is over though. Unless your name is Chrissie Kroplnicki. Then you do it twice. With 10 minutes recovery between! See, Chrissie was about 7 minutes into her inital effort when it was realized that her weight had not been entered into the computer (key variable to determining speed on a Computrainer as it is based on power/weight ratio). One of the organizers attempted to get her to stop and restart. Chrissie was not having it! She was 7 minutes into her escape from Hell- she wasn’t heading back to start the trek again! While the speed is not accurate without weight, the wattage reading is not affected. Since our main concern with the event was to check power progress, Chrissie wanted to get her number. So she finished, hitting her goal wattage, and was attempting to regain blood flow to the brain when she was asked by an event organizer if she’d like to do it again… What?! Are you nuts?! Chrissie said “No!”. She faltered. Then she said “Yes!”. What?! Is she nuts?! Maybe the ol’ grey matter was still waiting for its nourishment! Either way, Chrissie was back on the bike and cranking away within 10 minutes. Not only did she hit her wattage AGAIN, she took third place overall! Her second time trial effort was the third fastest women’s time of the whole day! Chrissie rocks!!

(The Mentally-Soft Machine!)

Me – 4th place. Ok, so I was beat by the chick who had to do it twice, BUT I hit my goal wattage. Yessss! The base phase is starting to payoff – wattage is rising, pace is dropping, body fat (although at the pace of molassess… mmmm, molassess…) is creeping down. Feeling good!

The Jackal movies

Star Trek: Insurrection video So we wrapped up the TT, did a transition run around central park, and headed home just in time for the snow to start. My poor Guru has not seen pavement since early December – hopefully she doesn’t feel too naked without the trainer attached to her tail when we finally get to roam the South Shore again! As much as I miss the open road, the wind blowing through my helmet, the taste of the dirt being flung off Tim’s wheel, etc, all these trainer rides are making a huge difference in my pedaling efficeincy, pedaling consistancy, and overall power. Some how we haven’t missed a second of training, and so far, I’m hitting, in some cases exceeding, my pre-LP goals. I’ll take it!

Soooo, Snow Day! It’s a bummer that he’ll have to make the days up at the end of the year, but it’s fun having Tim around on a random week day. We slept in, we did our recovery rides, we couch-potatoed it! Here’s Tim doing his core work for the day:

(It’s taken from inside because I did not venture outside the whole day!)

And this is how Jake spends his snow days:

Gotta love New England weather!!

• Safehouse rip

Tags: Chrissie Kroplnicki, Guru, time trials, Training