Have just spent a week revamping a website and dealing with incompetent ISP support here in France. My head was exploding by the end and the stress levels were on par with a Fukushima reactor. Strangely this makes it very hard to switch back over to being motivated towards exercise – but with the weather starting to clear up after a miserable week of cloud and rain I dragged myself out of the door. Knowing that the workout ahead is going to be tough also adds to the reluctance to get going. Predictably my head just wasn’t into it at all but I could perceptibly feed the tension and stress dropping as the kilometres rolled by.
I was listening to the Afro Celt Sound System and Eric Clapton tracks on my telephone through cheap 19€ Skull Candy ear buds that are really excellent, never come out, block out all wind noise and have an amazing sound quality (better than my expensive in-ear monitors!) It’s the fourth time in the past month I’ve attacked this same circuit -Aime, Montgirod, Moutiers, Notre Dame du Pré, Aime of 52km with 1800m climbing. The amusing thing is that I now know how well I’m preforming just through listening to the music because of associating certain tracks with certain locations. When the Clapton drum solo is still not finished when I reach Notre dame du Pré then I’m well ahead!
Descending from Montgirod there was a dirty great truck winding it’s way down the mountain and determined not to let me though despite making myself very visible in his driver side mirror. Eventually I tackled the challenge and he did make some space instead of crushing me into the wall at the side of the road. At this point I felt an up-welling of anger towards the driver but it was really all the frustration of the computing that was coming out. This might not be ideal but it’s a lot better than bottling it all up and ending up depressed. My rage continued for a while and was channelled into aggressive descending and tight cornering on the hairpin bends. By the time I was at the bottom of the descent I was starting to feel much better and was ready for the second big climb up to Notre Dame du Pré.
Ultimately cycling seems to do more good for mental health than even for physical health! I was surprised on the climb because I kept up a steady pace all the way to the top despite it being a very tough and long climb that can easily be demoralising. I was able to attack on the steepest sections instead of backing off and worked on good technique – staying in the saddle and pulling up though the abdomen.
I could see that despite everything it would be possible to set a new record for this route so that added to the motivation to keep up the pressure. In the end the previous best (last August) was beaten by over five minutes – being the equivalent of about 1.5km in a race. I didn’t feel great mentally or physically but this is obviously simply the outcome of training. After the workout I went though the “sleepy” phase for a few hours but couldn’t sleep because of a dental appointment. The sleepy phase passed by itself and then I felt fine again, but unusually the legs really felt it. Normally even after a very hard bike ride my legs feel fine after an initial recovery – but here they felt more like they do after running. Must be the result of transporting all my excess weight (at the moment) at record breaking speed up the mountains!