How tired are you?

November 15, 2018 § 5 Comments

I was talking to a friend who said “Man, I am tired. My legs feel terrible.”

“Then you should rest,” I said

“Are you crazy? Tired legs mean you’re fit.”

I shook my head. “That’s nuts.”

Then I remembered a conversation I once had with Derek the Destroyer. “Best results come when your legs are tired,” he had said.

“That’s fucked up,” I had dismissed it.

A couple of days ago I was having coffee with my coach. Actually I don’t have a coach. He is more like a friend. Actually, I don’t have any friends. He is more like someone I bought a cup of coffee for. Actually, he hates coffee.

“So what’s all this bullshit about tired legs being good?” I asked.

“It’s true. Tired legs mean you are fit.”

“Dude, my legs are fuggin’ NEVER tired.”

He shrugged. “You’re proving my point.”

“So are you always tired then?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“Like how tired?”

“I fall asleep mid-day. Can’t focus. Constantly disoriented.” Then he nodded off mid-sentence. I shook his shoulder.

“So I should be more tired?”

He blinked like an owl. “Where am I?”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” I said. “2019 is gonna be the year of the tired, starting now.”

Coachnotcoach nodded, smiled, and drifted back off.

Getting on the program

I went home and took out my trusty notepad to sketch out my training plan. Obviously I had been going way too easy on myself. I get up at 4:30 AM every morning, and since I go to sleep at 9:30, that’s a whole seven hours of sleep. I immediately penciled in 3:30 as my new wake-up time.

Then I reviewed my usual schedule, which looks like this:

Monday: Rest day

Tuesday: Easy spin

Wednesday: Rest day

Thursday: Brisk pedal

Friday: Coffee cruise

Saturday: 3 hour spin

Sunday: Rest day

Factoring in my new training plan, which was to always be tired, I came up with this revised schedule:

Monday: Easy 3-hour spin

Tuesday: Ten 30-sec. intervals followed by NPR, followed by 20 miles of hard climbing

Wednesday: 1-hour all-out effort

Thursday: 4-hour climbing ride with The Big One, Anchovy, Friendship Park, Domes x 2, Via Zumaya, the Woods repeats x 3

Friday: 50-mile coffee cruise with one 20-minute threshold effort

Saturday: 40-mile warm-up, Donut Ride, 40-mile cool down

Sunday: 150-mile easy recovery ride

No slack in the schedule

It was pretty obvious that the above schedule was going to tire me out so that I would really be able to go fast, but it seemed like I’d overlooked something, and I had: Nutrition. Turns out I am overeating for a true exhaustion training plan, so I went through my normal diet, which looks like this:

  1. Breakfast: Piece of bread
  2. Lunch: Piece of bread with a teaspoon of peanut butter
  3. Snack: Half a small banana
  4. Dinner: 100g of plain pasta with salt

This type of gluttony wasn’t going to cut it, so I went immediately for the overage (and I know it’s hitting you in the face like a bucket of spit), which is clearly the banana. So the new Exhaustion Diet looks like this:

  1. Breakast: Half a piece of bread
  2. Lunch: Small cup of water
  3. Snack: Smaller cup of water
  4. Dinner: Salt

Anyway, please check back soon as I will be updating this blog with the results of my new training plan. You are free to use this plan, but please give me proper attribution.

END

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Special movie news, from my friend Kurt Broadhag: There will be a screening of the RAAM movie on Nov. 28th at the AMC Galleria South Bay 16 at 6:30 pm. For the show to go through, he needs 40 more people to purchase tickets within the next five days. You can get tickets at: https://tickets.demand.film/event/6316

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