Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Jet Lag Sucks

...it really does. I just had no idea how much! So today, I got up on time and went down to the 8am group ride. I do this group ride all the time, and it is fun for me. My plan was to stick with the group ride, and then climb some hills afterwards to get my climbing workout in.

On the warmup I felt fine. The legs felt reasonably fresh (remember, I'd been in France until Saturday morning, 9 days off the bike), and all was well until someone decided that it was time to hammer. I geared down and went, and stayed on, but wow, it was harder than it had to be! It was a strange feeling. My legs weren't burning like they usually do when I'm about ready to blow up, but it was definitely not the crisp reaction I was expecting. Hmmm. After a couple of well timed "kim, STAY ON HIS WHEEL!" "don't let a gap form," comments from other (faster) folk, I managed to hang on. The ego was quickly dissispating, though, and for me, the ego and the fact that I'm one of only 1-2 girls that makes it on these rides is about the only thing that keeps me hanging! So when the ride split, and I made the possibly bad decision to take the longer, hill route up Gubernador canyon, I was dropped like a rock. Oh well...good day for a ride by myself, I try to tell myself, as I keep wondering why I'm feeling so very slow. I did manage to thrash myself and get up the hill, and enjoyed the descent, and caught the stragglers on the final climb up to the re-group spot at Bates... After that, I skipped contesting for the final sprints back into town, and did manage to punish myself with extra climbs up Toro, Lladera, and Mountain Dr. I did skip gibraltar, though....that 12noon meeting saved me!

AFter feeling lame and slow all afternoon, I've decided to chalk it up to jet lag. Someone once told me that you have to give yourself ~1 day per hour of time change to fully adapt. And since i was 9 hours off..this could take awhile! Plus, I didn't ride for a week on top of that, so I guess I can't claim to be in top form, either!

I guess I'll just have to go back on thursday to redeem myself?

Happy I havent' sent in for an upgrade yet. Completely NOT feeling like a sandbagger today!

Ciao!

6 comments:

dr-nitro said...

The French probably just slipped ya some lazy juice. 35 hour work weeks. Come one.

Kimberly (aka. DrKim) said...

dr-nitro: yup. that must be it. I hope its out of my system by now! I think so..as I did a long ride yesterday and all seemed a bit more normal...

argh!

dr-nitro said...

Just keeping chasing them boys up the hills and the legs will come back. The flatness, though, was probably more of a function of days off, and long flight. Long flights thrash legs.

BTW, what's up with the verification?

Kimberly (aka. DrKim) said...

ok ok. I turned verification off. It is pretty annoying, I admit.

Let's hope the legs come back soon! I actually felt pretty normal yesterday. We'll see how the legs hold up this weekend and next week when i hammer with the guys again.

Chasing chasing...that's all i seem to do these days. I'm in that mid-season lull where there aren't that many races...trying to do an endurance block and get a little fitness jump. We'll see if it works...

dr-nitro said...

No racing? There are crits. Crits everywhere. Damn crits.

Kimberly (aka. DrKim) said...

i know i know. but crits are not a test of my endurance. If I'm going to be a 3, I need to build up my endurance for the longer races. I'm still going to race the summer crits...just not take training time off for them so much. Sure, I might not have great finishes because I'm a bit tired...but my real goal is to have the fitness i need to be a 3 next year.