Jens Voight is famous for his internal messaging of “shut up legs.” It’s his way of overriding his central governor. I got to test this today. Before starting my day’s workouts I’d trained nearly 11 1/2 hours already this week. Most of my training has been pretty low key and my fatigue level wasn’t that high, despite spending five hours driving yesterday on what turned out to be a training “rest day.” I started the morning with a one mile run, to get my legs moving and my run streak kept intact. I then swam nearly an hour as part of a masters swim. Then it was on to my first outdoor bike ride this year, a group ride with my try club and several elite young triathletes who are training this winter at my athletic club. I’ve been pretty happy with how my cycling has come along over the last few weeks, but didn’t know what to expect.
I’ve been trying to keep my cycling relatively low key and volume focused. Putting in too much intensity could negatively impact my quest to significantly increase my bike volume. This was supposed to be a pretty “chill” ride today, but it turned out not quite to be that way. It was interesting how the ride evolved. Leaving Westlake is flat for the first mile or so, and I felt fine, but then there’s a short climb into the Lake Sherwood area. I haven’t done any climbing yet this year, and immediately I found myself struggling significantly. We got back on Portrero for another flat section. I’d already fell into the back group and decided to take it relatively easy until we hit the next climb coming out of Hidden Valley. I felt a little better on the climb, although it still seemed relatively hard. The group reorganized after the descent, so we were all together again.
Before I knew it, we were descending towards Port Hueneme. I’m still pretty careful on descents, especially ones with switchbacks. I was falling behind again, but made up some speed towards the bottom, where the road straightens out. For some reason, I decided to increase my effort, and managed to pass a few of the elite triathletes (who were riding very easily by the way). I did this on purpose, as we had one short steep “kicker” to deal with, which I attacked as hard as I could, probably hitting 400w. My legs had started to feel better as well, which was interesting. Coming down to the final stretch of road, one of the elite triathletes passed me and I got onto his wheel and in his slipstream, where I focused on staying for the next several minutes. I was going nearly 25 mph, and I’m sure that my wattage was solid. I was starting to wonder where I had gotten this new found energy.
I managed to stay with the front group until the turnaround in Port Hueneme, but chose to stay towards the back on the return and just take it easy. Unfortunately, the folks cycling with me were taking it even easier than I was trying to do, so I began “bridging” to the folks in front of me. This led to an hour of very solid cycling. When I had finally bridged toward the front, I got on Steve’s wheel and held it. I didn’t have much more to give, but it would have been easy for me to slow down and take it easy. For some reason, I was just not prepared to listen to my body today. I was determined have a solid ride. But I still had 22 miles to go, which would take over another hour. At this point, I was in a group of five, and I was determined to hold their wheels. There were some hills left to climb, and somehow I’d found my climbing legs. I have no idea where that came from, some of it may have been my legs warming up, and some of it may have been my mind making a decision as to how I was going to proceed.
With each successive hill, I kept persevering. As we got near Westlake there was one last short climb to hit. Once again, despite the fact that I was fatigued, and had been on my bike for nearly 4 hours of solid riding, I attacked this last hill. Ignoring my central governor, I’m sure that I once again hit a high wattage for the short climb. I had read about this phenomenon before, despite feeling fatigued, one can ignore that fatigue and force their legs to go all out once again.
Tomorrow when I get on my bike in the morning for another long ride, I’ll know whether I pushed too hard today. But it’s ok, it felt great to push it!
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