time trial

There are Three Desires I have about any race or time trial I go for. The first desire is to hit the time that will get the job done. The second is the time that I would feel really pleased with. The third is the secret time that, in my heart, I really really want to hit: a time that would constitute at the very least, a breakthrough.

I had all three desires in place for my 3200k time trial -- 8 laps, or two miles. Getting under 12 minutes would merit "Job done". 11:45-ish would be a real boost. "Secretly" I was hoping for something even faster.

A moment of truth today, an "official" not-secret time trial over my chosen race distance -- one mile.

We did it on a slightly downhill dirt road with a rising headwind after half a mile. The last 400m was hell, pure hell, but I staggered in with 5:28, about 15 seconds down on Kyle.

One good run is all it takes...then the world is suddenly a better place.

And today was the day. A five-mile time trial I had been dreading. Another key piece in coach Bobby McGee's assessment of us sub-5 milers, the instructions for this one were to go out and get steady state heart rate data. Not an average heart rate; Bobby wants to know where our heart rate settles when we are committed to good pace cruise mode.

Lately I've been feeling tired and grungy. I'm flying one day, wiped out another -- and there's no pattern to it. I gave a pint of blood on Thursday (or that's what it felt like) to fuel some tests to see if we can find out what's going on. Meanwhile, I have cut back training to just every other day, in a bid to help my recovery from whatever it is that is bugging me.