T-36: Introducing Carmen
This is Carmen - she is a Liv Avow Pro 0 and it to be my new trusty steed following the tragic death of Violetta
A hairy scary new goal
Now that we've made the decision to not attempt Challenge Melbourne and instead aim for an event later in the year, my training mindset has had to change from one motivated by urgency and proximity to focusing on long term consistency. This has never been a strength of mine - easily bored with drama-queen tendencies and hard wired to respond to immediate adversity rather than steady execution of a plan - the next 9 months are going to be a challenging learning curve. The strategy for now is to focus only on turning Training Peaks green for the day and worry about tomorrow tomorrow.
This week had a two very big firsts - first run in weeks (2 months exactly to be specific - my last pain filled run was 17 January) thanks to an Achilles problem that has been bubbling away since October last year, got significantly worse over our holiday and and it has been obvious in the last two weeks that trying to manage an active recovery wasn't working so I sought the help of Port Melbourne Physiotherapy and Pilates. A combination of massage, dry needling and ultrasound on both the achilles and the soleus and there has been enough of an improvement to attempt 15 minutes of run/walk on Saturday which was completely successfully with only a little pain.
The other first is the arrival of Carmen and the inaugural ride! Carmen is the replacement for Violetta courtesy of our contents insurance and the good folks at Giant South Yarra. Her name is inspired by Carmen Electra on account of her Di2 electronic groupset which is a total dream. In the excitement of getting Carmen ready for her inaugural ride, which manly consisted of moving various items from one bento box to another, swearing at the vagaries of the electric drill whilst attempting to change the pedals and investigating the onboard hydration system, I completely forgot about taking the Blok lollies with me when I set out on Sunday morning. Consequently, I was the crazy lady talking to herself for the last 15km after being swamped in fatigue after 2 hour. Not an experience to repeat.
Speaking of the onboard hydration - this is going to take some time to get comfortable with so at this point the jury is out on whether or not I actually like it. There is an unexpected benefit of the cooling spatter of water that gets splashed over one when going over heavy bumps - extra handy when it got abit warm!
So this week in numbers....
TSS: The aspiration is to have a score between 700-1000, the actual this week was.....124CTL: In pursuit of numbers in the 80-115 range, the actual this week was....19
So we have a LONG way to go and a step up in intensity and consistency is needed. Here's to better numbers next week!
Everything can be taken from a human but one thing - the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning