Even Sal Had Weeks Like This

Let me tell you about a place we athletes call Perfect. In Perfect, you pull on your wetsuit and slip into the serene blue lake waters to log a near endless swim where each stroke you take is stronger than your last. When it comes time to pull yourself out of the water, you're as fresh as you were before you even got your face wet. Mounting your bike, you find yourself wondering why it suddenly feels so light and agile, particularly as you ascend through the twisting, technical singletrack. Cresting the rocky and rooty hills with ease, those that would typically break everyone else's will, you put the pressure on the pedals and find, to your own surprise, that there's not a single bad line you can take as you rocket back to the beginning of your mountain bike loop. Just starting to feel warmed-up, you pull on your running shoes and hit the trails for a leg-breaker of a run. In the end, you finish up strong and with a quick cadence. At the car, you dump all your gear in the back and stretch it out, looking forward to your rest day tomorrow - basking in the glory of another day's triumph.

The plan was to drive over to Perfect this afternoon and get a final workout in before my mini-taper. Today, Grafton would be Perfect, and I would do a full race brick (swim, bike, run workout) to learn the tri course. Simple enough, my morning swim would be replaced today with swimming the course several times. I'd follow this up with a loop of the mountain bike course at near race-pace, then finish it off with a slow and easy trail run around the run-course. As it turns out, however, I must have missed a left-hand turn somewhere just outside of Troy, as this afternoon I found myself pretty much about as far away from Perfect as one could get.

For starters, the swim course was closed - well, it was near the beach where these enormous signs read: "no lifeguard on duty - no swimming allowed". Strike 1. So I had to drive over to an adjacent lake to swim. Though it was good to spend more time in the open water, it was impossible to judge distances or speed all by myself in the middle of a lake with no markers of any kind. Plus, things just really weren't feeling that great. My shoulders were tired, my breathing was rushed and my heart rate seemed abnormally high the whole time. There was also this one point where I had turned around in the "deep" section and got my feet wrapped up in some sort of underwater plant life. I thought for certain it was a gigantic octopus trying to wrap it's tentacles around my body and drag me under. You never know with these things.

Peeling off my wetsuit, I realized just how hot and humid it was today. Yesterday I did my first speedwork session at the track of the season. It was 94 and crazy humid. So it wasn't very long after mounting my bike that I realized I was obviously feeling the effects of yesterday's workout. The first 10 minutes of the mountain bike portion of my workout felt like 7 hours. I couldn't push a gear, pick a line or clear a section to save my life. Gradually, though, as I took in more sports drink to bring my fuel levels back up, things started to get a little bit better. I felt a bit more flow in my ride, my legs were coming around and my mind was starting to relax. It was here I said to myself:

"Self?"

"Yes", Self responded.

"It's great that you're feeling better and all... but does any of this trail look familiar?"

"No", Self said, "You're probably off the course. You know how bad you are with directions."

Self was right... again. I'd steered myself way off course - to the point where I was outside the park's boundaries. I'm not sure where I took a wrong turn, but it took a combination of pavement, fire roads and diabolical sections of single-track to get back to the parking lot. Marvelous.

Rolling up to the car, I finally succumbed to my inner voice telling me to drop today's workout. My swim was mediocre at best, my mountain bike was downright disasterous - the last thing I needed was a horrible run to totally drive my esteem into the lake mud. The body was speaking (screaming) ever since yesterday's workout... it just took the mind a little while to be convinced.

Nothing to do now but rest, recover and focus. Saturday should be an interesting one.

Thanks for reading.