Amazing what you can do with some spare time

The past 4 weeks have been a welcomed break from racing. Not sure I would have thought that in retrospect if you would have asked me to predict how I would feel a month back, but upon further reflection it's been a needed break from the weekend racing.

If you are anything like me and my dedication to training, you eventually can find yourself too wrapped up in the details of your fitness. For me, I'm a technology geek at heart (though with having kids I've moved further to the right of the Geoffrey Moore continuum and have become a technology laggard...see an old blog posts on this) who absolutely loves using the Trainingpeaks software with my Powertap. All the data is fun to chart and watch as you go through your workouts. However, that darn PMC (performance manager chart) is almost my downfall. I hate seeing my fitness slide like a rock when I take rest days, but I know it's best for me to do this from time to time. On a side note, I've been resting more often this season, and it's been very helpful. In fact I might rest today; I've got Wente RR tomorrow, but maybe I should try something different...who knows.

Anyways, I get too wrapped up in the PMC and I did learn something about myself from this break. The PMC isn't the end all, be all to understanding fitness. Here's an example: I came back from the Disneyland/Wine Trip week and promptly kicked the butts of a few fellow work buddies on our regular noontime ride, specifically up the climb on Old Calaveras Rd. Twice in the same week! My PMC chart told me I had lost some fitness, but that's not what I experienced.

Does this mean I'm going to walk away from the technology and become a cyclist who "listens" to their body to determine their training regimen? Probably not, but I will give more heed to what my body is telling me.

Yeah, and speaking of listening to your body, I might take up some trail running as a cross-training endeavor in the off season, but man, that treadmill workout at Disneyland was the worst thing for me. It put me out of commission for about 3 days. My shins were on fire and it wasn't fun.

Ok, so let's try to get this post back on track. After this ramble what I was trying to get to was the fact that being away from racing puts life in perspective. There's so much more out there and I've got to learn to keep things in perspective as the season progresses. I guess it's best to figure this out now rather than in July when baby #3 is due!