Faffing, piking & attitude adjustments

We swim at 5am when school is in session so that the local high school swim team can practice at 6 am.  I've been enjoying my swim workouts - finally getting to the point where I can feel some power and speed and I'm looking forward to a month of intense swim clinics in January that I hope will kick my ass and give me something more concrete to work on after so many years of not really thinking too much about my swimming.  For some reason though, yesterday's swim felt like someone had emptied the pool of water and replaced it with molasses.  Warm molasses.  I felt like crap and never really got into the workout.  So at about the 30 minute mark, when it was evident that our team workout would be overlapping with the local high school swim team workout, I decided to pike and go sit in the bleachers to wait for Mark.

So I got to observe the high schoolers training.  My first reaction was jealousy at their lithe, smooth, powerful form.  So many of them looked like they were effortless as they powered down the length of the pool.  Little shits.  But then I watched some more and laughed to myself at all the faffing around that I saw.  How many ways can you avoid a workout?  Those damn goggles need constant fiddling with - rubbing out the fog and adjusting the size.  Then there seemed to be some kind of disorientation that struck about 5 yards out from the wall.  They'd stand up, look around, figure out where the wall was and dolphin dive into the wall.  Of course there was chatting and giggling (the girls, that is) and the posturing (the boys).  Too funny - if there was a way to delay the workout, these kids found it.

Which set me thinking about what I've seen (or practiced myself) in the fine art of faffing.  There's the setting up of the trainer for spin.  You set it up, you climb on the bike, you discover that the resistance isn't enough, so you get off and adjust.  You climb back on, only to realize that you've forgotten your sweat towel.  Off, rifle through your bag, traipse out to the car, back to the bike with your favorite lime green towel that perfectly complements the neon purple of your custom tri-bike.  Then maybe you'll get back to warming up half way through the session.  Faff, faff, faff.

Then there's piking - or at least trying to.  Obviously, I piked yesterday on swim.  And today on track - twice.  At least I know I can't pike on spin tomorrow since I'm leading it.  I tried to pike on my ride on Monday though.  Talk about a disappointing day.  It was my first opportunity to take the new tri-bike for a ride outside.  Our friends suggested riding out at Gainesville, and we thought we'd re-do the 42 miler we'd most recently ridden only two weeks ago.  I was excited - anticipating the speed gain that had been promised to me by moving from an old, heavy road bike to a sparkly new aero tri-bike.  Oh holy hubris, Batman!  Not only was it blowing 40 bastards (just so I could learn first hand the joys of how to handle a flat bike in a side wind), but, frankly, it's better to have a triple when climbing hills than a compact crank with a cluster built for speed.  And on the downhills, yes, the tri-bike accelerated beautifully, but I maxed out the speed way earlier than I do on the heavier Indy.  I quickly lost my cycling companions, which was a blessing since I was feeling bad to holding them up and it's better that they didn't experience my swearing at each new hill.

I tried to pike. Actually, we all tried to pike once we realized how windy it was, and when we started to see the snowflakes.  We found several perfectly acceptable shortcuts, only to find each and every one of them was unpaved and not one of us was willing to risk our expensive Cervelo bikes to test out the dampening qualities of carbon.  So we ended up cutting a whopping 2 miles off our ride, although I did manage to avoid the very worst of the hills.

So, 40 miles of misery and disappointment and fear that my bluff had been called, well and truly - I was nowhere near as good a cyclist as I thought I was.  I cycled the last ten miles alone, feeling very sorry for myself.  But I was most bummed by the thought that I was dragging my friends down into my pissiness.  So as I turned into the parking lot, I said out loud to myself: "Ok now, you need an attitude adjustment."  Well, blow me down if it didn't work.  Yeah, I'm still bummed at how badly the ride went, but I managed to be relatively perky and enjoyed a well deserved lunch with our friends.

So - not such a great week on the training front.  But lots learned.