HURT BOX Workout

This weekend was looking random for me, as the weather was predicted crap and only one crit Saturday in Milwaukee. After the past few weekends of traveling one or both days, a house that is full of dirty laundry and mail that needs sorting, I opted to stick around Madison.

This past week I feel like I may have had a turn-around with workouts and how I am feeling on the bike. Its funny, I look back to about a year ago, and think of how fit I was living in Tucson, availability to ride all the freaking time, but I don't necessarily think that there's benefit if you are doing junk workouts without structure. I have been dilligently trying to follow my "go hard or go home" combined with "easy means easy" workouts. Hard is hard, and easy is easy. There really shouldn't be much fluff in between. Fluff is fluff, and lets face it, no one is fluffin' on race day.

Tue night was the season opener for the Madison Tue Night Crit series. Holy hell, this has got to make one stronger!!! I rode over an easy 20min from the house, and did the 30 min effort in the B's race, feeling like a fish out of water in the first few laps. I found a group to work with that had been spit off the back, and though I was already discouraged being that I couldn't hang with the chase group, I was humbled by my ability to actually work harder than I have been all season (read: The crit that I DNF'd the week prior to..blech)

My group was about 4 deep and I sprinted hard to the finish, crossing ahead of the others. I thought to myself, "damn, I am just getting warmed up, let's do it again!" I rode a few cooldown laps solo, and this awesome gal Jane pulls up alongside (I had recognized her from Baraboo the week before) and she encouraged me to join her in the A's race that was minutes away from starting. What the hell, why not,right?!

So low and behold, Jane and I promised to stick together and work if we got dropped> Boy, did we EVER get dropped. Early on and for the next 40 min, we would hang to a wheel for 30-60 sec, and then recover til they lapped us again..we got lapped a milion times, but it was a super workout!

Today I was painfully introduced to the hurt box that is Jill Kislia. She is riding effin strong and kicking butt this year. Neither of us did the Muskego crit, so we instead took off to Observatory hill and did some hard (for ME!) hill repeats...Jill was encouraging the whole time, and though I am certain the workout didn't kick her butt nearly the way it did mine, I am uber grateful for her forcing me to be in pain during most of the 50 miles today. Ahhhhhh......and now I am tired..

Rachel won the Muskego Crit! Rock on ISCorp...and from what I can tell Kristin is hanging in the mix at Joe Martin...can't wait to read her race report!!!! Good luck to everyone else racing this weekend!!!

Other than that, life is good and I need to find a dress for a wedding of my dear friends next Fri.....So after a bit more downtime its off to TJ Maxx to bargain shop...happy training until next time!