Road Food

Post workout(s) brain dump, minimal editing, just getting it down: Here's something that never happened these past few months of riding on the trainer: getting off the bike at the 25-mile mark and buying a McDouble at McDonald's. That's what happened today. I set out on my first outdoor ride in ages not even thinking about the fact that it was nearly lunchtime. Everything was pretty discombobulated at home, with a couple of plumbers taking out all the old, leaky pipe and replacing it with new stuff. Anyway, after an hour and a half on the road I was falling-over starving. Now Niko and I do eat fast food every six weeks or so, but our preference is for the Northwest chain Burgerville, whose well-earned motto is Fresh, Local, Sustainable. It had been years since I was in a McDonald's. But a burger, even a McDonald's burger, suddenly seemed vital to me making it home on this ride. So for a buck I got the McDouble. A buck! That's a lot of food for a buck. Why isn't there healthy food available at that price? (Oh, yeah, there is: It's called an apple.) Well it hit the spot and I did the last 15 miles of this 40-miler with vigor. Then it was to the pool, not because I really wanted to swim but because they have showers and I needed to take a shower and the water was still several hours from being back on at home. I thought I might just do an easy, relaxed 1500 yards or something, since it really was supposed to be a day off from swimming. But I ended up doing 100 yards of warm-up, 10x200, and 100 yards of cool-down. The 10x200 was surprising. Coming off back-to-back swim days of 3500 and 3000 yards, I thought I'd have nothing. But after a few around 3:40, by my sixth 100 I was cranking them out in 3:30, downright spry for me. I began to run out of gas on the last two, but was pleased with myself for gutting them out. Man, swimming hard intervals can suck. Your muscles are not at all pleased and there's this voice in you saying, "Just stop, you'll feel so much better." But you push through and holy cow progress is made. This dedication to hard intervals the last couple of weeks has dramatically improved my swimming. True, my swimming sucked, and now it's just the thinnest margin better than sucking. But the change that is happening is real, I can feel it, and I love it. I may swim again tomorrow.

The week so far...
Monday: 11 mile run
Tuesday: 3500 swim, 40-mile ride (trainer)
Wednesday: 3000 swim, 10-mile run
Thursday: 40-mile ride (road), 2200 swim