Ready for Game 7

After a late wake up and a few hours of procrastination I suited up in my old man socks and vest and headed out, for a whole 2 seconds, the temperature had warmed up a bit so the vest wasn't needed. Then I headed out for real, had a tough workout ahead of me and I'm feeling it now as I'm watching the habs smoke the Penguins, should be an interesting third period.

After a loop by the river I started a 10min build to get my heart rate up and my legs ready for a hard effort. De Cal explained how to do these intervals properly and he's the one who told me about them in the first place, thanks man. The plan was to do 5 minutes of 30s on/30s off with 5 minutes recovery 5 times, but I was to stop if my power dropped too much. The first three were very tough, I thought my fourth would be my last but decided to start my fifth set and see how I felt. I finished it strong but had a hard time spinning slowly for a bit with the strong headwind. I thought of turning around to recover but I found my groove in my second lowest gear. The hard part is that the 30s off is not really off but more like ease back down to tempo because by the time you start slowing down it's time to go hard again.

Next up was 4x8min cruise intervals with 3min recovery, perfect to start at the 2h mark. The effort is just a bit harder than tempo, like being in a break that just formed and you're trying to build a gap. I had to take a gel after the third one to make it through the fourth which was going straight into the big headwind, I was fighting off a bonk with 3 minutes left and managed to hold it off. I still had some time to do in the headwind, I spun as smooth as I could, I could feel the lactic acid attempting to drain from my legs and it made quite the burn. Got back home with just over 3 hours of ride time, 2 bars, 2 750ml bottles of water and a gel in me.

It's funny how full your fridge looks when you're resting or fighting off a cold and once you're training picks up again it's "where the hell's all my food!?!". If the rain holds off I'll be cutting grass tomorow at work and hopefully getting a good tempo ride on the mtb in the afternoon, if it rains then I'll most likely do some core in the am and head over to the ITT for 6. I'm hoping for no rain because even though I'll have to work I'll have some beauty trails to look forward too and money is never a bad thing either.

A perfect meal for a carb-starved body, that's chicken parmesian burried under the pasta salad