When I said, "Peaking for an Oly race is like dying and being reborn.every.single.day", I meant it.
It's the single most hardest thing I have ever done. EVER.
Last year, I did a few oly races, but my training was not even close to this magnitude. I was, also, learning and (being honest) I wasn't ready for this level of training.
I am now, and that's what matters.
The emphasis on oly distance has shown me how strong I am. I'm stronger than I even realized. Or as I told Coach, "I'm sweating out my weakness on a daily basis."
Still, I have a number of things that I'm working on to help me achieve my goals.
As I was walking home (truth be told--it was more like crawling), I thought of the quote, "Shut up legs". That's not my issue. My issue is my head.
The note from Coach today was along the lines of "This workout will make you dig deep when fatigued."
Oh. And. It. Was. Tough.
Halfway through, I thought, "How am I going to go harder? I'm struggling just to maintain." I thought of Coach A's words, "It doesn't matter that you're struggling. YOU ARE hitting the intervals. This is how you get stronger."
Digging deep to pull out 120% intervals after 50 minutes of doing increasing intervals.
It's the truth. My legs LIKE this. They want to go hard.
In all this, I have managed to find ways to distract my brain. "Oh LOOK! COOKIES!"
It's hard to turn my brain completely off, to just stop thinking, but if I can just distract it for a little while and let my body do it's job, THAT's when I will reach my goals, like I did today.
I pushed through. When I thought I wouldn't be able to hold the watts at the end, I managed to ride even harder.
When Liz and I first started working together, she sent me a message that said, "Brain off, body on."
Sometimes the simplest of messages are the hardest to grasp.
Over a year later, I'm starting to understand.