Mission Accomplished...Sort Of

Since January, I've set my alarm clock over a dozen times to wake up at 6:00 AM to train, and it was only until last week that I finally succeeded. It took me three months of trying but I finally woke up to swim at 6:15 AM. How times have changed. Five years ago, I was waking up at 5:30 AM at least 4 days a week to ride the trainer, swim, or do mile repeats...yes, I said mile repeats. Three years ago, that 5:30 AM wake-up only occurred once or twice a week. Now, I'm averaging a 6:00 AM wake-up once every three months. I don't think this post is going to garner me any sponsors. As I've aged, I find myself overly practical. These days, almost everything carries more weight than training: sleep, hanging with the nieces and nephews, blogging, you get the idea. I've even come to convince myself that training is unhealthy, go ahead, read this, I dare you. Well, after my breakthrough last week, I managed to fail this week and slept through my first 6:00 AM wake-up call. I'm giving it another shot tomorrow morning. But I am training and starting to feel fit again. My team had a training camp in Napa this past weekend and I went from my longest ride being 35 miles (done once) to riding 77 miles. Needless to say I totally bonked. A bike bonk is such a unique feeling, nothing else compares to it. By the way, if you ever bonk on the bike, push the big gears and spin at a low low cadence. You'll slowly come back to life. It's very counterintuitive and no matter how often I give this advice, very few actually follow it. Trust me, it works. I learned it from my friend who learned this from Brett Sutton (Team TBB coach) when he trained with him in 1995. After being dropped by the A group at mile 30, I was then dropped by the B group at mile 37, and then I was all by my lonesome in no man's land between the B group and the C group for the next 40 miles. Off the bike, I ran 4 miles at 7:30 pace and surprisingly felt good. The next day was a 20 mile ride with about 3600' of climbing and a 6.5 mile run at 7:28 pace off the bike. And just like that, I'm feeling fit. The advantage to being in this sport for 19 years is that you really do have a huge base...forever. I'll be sitting in the dark between 8:30-9:30 PM on Saturday; if you've been thinking of calling to catch up, now would be a good time.