The human body and it's ability to push beyond never ceases to amaze me. Take this past weekend ....
Saturday I did 16 (yes, sixteen) hill repeats - the hills were ~16% grade and were about 5min long each. The intervals were on the road so where was some standing involved :) It was tough. I was exhausted at the end of the ride ... my powertap ("the truth") was proof that it was a good workout - my watts were high but the last two intervals they dropped substantially. I was toast - good thing I only had 16 to do - I don't think I had any left in me!
Sunday we decided to venture out to Tiger. It's been a while since I've visited my old haunt and the schedule had me doing a hard 6 hour effort. What better place to beat myself up? I went into the ride with the goal of doing 4 laps as fast as possible. Last year my pacing laps were 1:20ish and my fastest lap time was 1:11, on a day when i only did 1 lap. So the goal for Sunday was to race the old me and see where I landed - and not to hold back.
I completely surprised myself! I did 4 laps at 1:12 exactly - no drop in the pace throughout the rides. To set the scene, tiger is an unrelenting 3 mile climb, followed by a 2 mile technical descent that is very unforgiving, a bit of a fireroad section and then another few miles of powerlines where the climbing gets up past 25% in several spots. It's 11 miles and 1900ft of climbing per lap.
Might not sound impressive to you but I was soo excited! I pulled off the fastest lap times for 4 laps in a row ever and I didn't show any signs of slowing down. Maybe this pacing thing is overrated?? My legs were screaming on every climb from the intervals on Saturday but they continued to turn the pedals over and over like clock work.
Like I said, the human body is an amazing thing ...
