My Body Hurts

It has been extremely rainy this year, which has caused several of our cycling classes to be cancelled.  On Saturday, Spin90 had a make-up session.  You could choose from 1, 2 or 3 hours, however you had to be pre-approved to join the 3 hour group since that group would be going on a road ride.  I emailed John to see if I was qualified to join that group.  At Tuesday's class, he said that I would be OK to be in that group but that I would be challenged to keep up.  I'm always up for a challenge!

So I showed up Saturday morning ready to ride.  The group included the really fast guy from Tuesday's class, Anne and her husband Chuck, Phaedra and Debbie from the last session of Spin90 class, and 2 other guys who I had not met before.  It was a small group and we were accompanied by 5 instructors.

Because I was one of the slowest in this group of people, I had 2 instructors around me for most of the ride.  (Yes, the sweepers...I already admitted I was one of the slowest!)  This was great because I got a lot of individual coaching and advice.  I focused on trying to stay relaxed and ahead of my cadence.  I worked hard on the hills and worked on active recovery at the summit.  I was able to stay in visual contact with the main group for the majority of the ride, which I considered a huge success.

As one of the other riders said "we must have hit every hill in the area".  It seemed like it was big hill after big hill after big hill.  Some were short and steep while others were over a mile long.  By the end of the ride, I simply didn't have any more in my tank.  The last 2 hills I basically crawled up and had to convince myself to keep pedaling.  I can't believe my bike was still standing up going that slowly.

But at the end of the 43 miles, I finished with a smile on my face.  I was physically drained but I was really proud of my effort.  I kept up with the fast riders and conquered some monster hills.  I was complimented by one of the other riders for maintaining a really good cadence on one of the long, grueling hills.  And one of the instructors told me that I wasn't as bad of a climber as I had claimed to be.  YAY!

This morning I went to the open water swim clinic at Gunpowder State Park conducted by Anne and Pam.  I had done this clinic in June and I'm so glad that I decided to do it again.  Probably the best thing that happened was that I got bumped, kicked and elbowed quite a bit.  These are all things that happen during a race, so it was so helpful to get used to it...especially after the kick to the head in the Dragonfly Tri.  I especially liked the drills that we did to simulate the start of a race.  We had swum 1.25 miles by the end of the class.

As I sit here on the sofa trying to relax and type up my thoughts, I'm feeling my body start to yell at me.  It started with the backs of my legs, then expanded to my rear end and lower back, and now I'm sore everywhere except my calves and my abs.  Advil is my savior right now!