Thursday, September 1, 2011

Mental Health Day

Hello friends!!  After a long and trying few weeks, I decided to take a day off from the world.  (No worries, I didn’t call in sick with the plague, my boss was totally on board with me taking the day off).  Lately there has been way too much unnecessary stress in my life, and I’ve definitely been feeling it.  So, even though we have a 3 day holiday weekend coming up, I decided to just take a lil one day vaca from responsibility and did what I wanted.
recumbant-biking-for-suckersOf course, the irony here is that my mental health day would be most people’s idea of hell.  Yup, it was time for the last 100 miler before Chesman (in 23 DAYS!!!).  The ride was supposed to happen on Saturday, but I signed up a few days ago for an impromptu half marathon at my Alma Mater, SUNY Geneseo, on Sunday.  (Yeah I know, there were so many things wrong with that statement.)
Thus, the ride needed to happen a few days before so my little leggies weren’t quite as sore (hey, I’m not going for science here.)  The catch?  I wanted to do it on the trainer.  This is a tool I use for a lot of shorter rides, power work, and some of my longer rides.  While riding outside is so much more fun, you get more bang for your buck on the trainer (I have a set up that allows you to ride any terrain in the world, which makes it awesome to actually train the race course, or any course) and is a crap ton safer than riding on the road with traffic (still have some PTSD from getting hit by a car during a training ride a few years ago).  It’s no sub for learning how to handle your bike, but a lot of pros swear by it to get faster, and that’s what I’m working on!!  So I decided that at least one hundred mile ride should be on the trainer….to give me something to be happy about on race day Smile (Imagine pedaling straight for 6 hours with no coasting or breeze to cool you off in a humid basement-yeah, that’s mental training, too!!)
Average person’s mental health day:  Sleeping in, eating chocolate, and watching bad TV on the couch.
Rae’s mental health day:  Doing 100 miles on the trainer, eating powerbars and bananas (on course food!) and watching bad TV Soap Opera re-runs for almost 6 hours while riding with no fan in a super humid basement.
Evil cat.
Did I mention we keep the cat box 5 feet from the trainer and the cat pooped at mile 8?  Wow.
So….5:34 hours, 2 powerbars, a pb sammich, a banana, and 2 gu’s, 5 episodes of Young and the Restless, 6 bottles of water and Perform, and 2 pee breaks later…I had my hundred miles.  Then, to frost the cake, I did a 15 minute T run.  Success.
Mental Health Status-feelin’ better about life.  Nothing like some quality time with me to get me revved up for whatever life can throw at me.  And I’m pretty sure that after that mental HTFU session on the computrainer (I did the Ironman New Zealand course-which is flat save for 5 miles of uphill on each loop) that Chessyman will be superfun on the bike!  (Or at least as superfun as 112 miles can be Smile with tongue out)
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Please don’t have me committed. 

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