Spring Once Again

27 mile ride (hills)

Hopefully this time it will stay. I'm so over winter. Now if I can only do something about the wind...

I was finally able to ride outdoors. Even better, I had to do hills. There's nothing like doing hills after being indoors for weeks to make me feel so out of shape and so unready for the CDA course. There's not really an opportunity for me to feel fast when doing hills, so it really is quite depressing. I'm not sure that I can really find much appreciate from this workout either. I did the back side of Old Stage twice as well as a small stint up Lefthand. Although they were in Z4, they were all really slow and I wouldn't say I felt great. All it really left me with was the feeling that I still have a long way to go before CDA which unfortunately is no longer a long ways away.

My HR seems to be relatively back to normal. It's a little hard to say with the bike since I recently adjusted my zones and brought everything down about 10bpm. My run on the treadmill was normal and the perceived effort was pretty much in line with the numbers, so I guess I'm back on track. Apparently my stress numbers have come back to a more reasonable number (from -40 something to -30 something to -9). I have been making a concerted effort to drink a lot of water. Even if it means getting up to pee 3 times a night. Most likely I'm already getting up to cover Mobi (yes, my very high maintenance dog requires being tucked in at night and several times during the night he'll get up to stretch and shake thereby losing his blanket. He then has to come stand beside me and whine so that I'll get up and cover him again. What better opportunity to take a pee break. Interestingly enough, he does not exhibit the same behavior if I let him sleep on the bed for the whole night. So when I know that I really need sleep, I'll let them up on the bed. Enough digression. Mobi gets enough attention as it is - he doesn't need blog postings in addition.).

So yeah, hydration. I'm trying to stay on top of it.