I didn’t see three elephants. That was just to get your attention, which is a poor lead because it leaves the reader disappointed and untrusting of the author from there on out. So now I’ll be brutally honest with you for the rest of this post: I only saw two elephants.
I was tired after the weekend, and thought that extra sleep would heal my torn muscle fibers faster. In fact, I’ve always been under the assumption that more recovery is better. I used to believe that the more training I did, the better I would get. But of course that lead me to serious overtraining and a complete loss of the year 2007. But overesting? That makes no sense, unless by “overesting” you mean you aren’t training anymore. But I have been training a lot, and resting (sleeping) a lot too. Classes have settled down a bit in the last week or two, and I’ve been catching up on sleep. I figured, “the more sleep I get the better rested I’ll be and the faster I can ride.” But it turns out that 10 to 11 hours of sleep per night is too much. Last night, I went to sleep at 11:00 and woke up at 10:30. (I usually get between 8 and 9 hours.) Maybe all this extra sleep I’ve gotten this past week explains all the crazy dreams I’ve been having.
I usually have weird dreams anyways, but one thing that all this extra sleep has certainly been causing is poor riding performance. Yesterday, I did some flat intervals for an appetizer, Nectar Way for an entrée, and an hour and a half easy riding for dessert. Not even this tasty ride could spike an interest in my legs’ pallet, for they were asleep for the majority of the workout.
Today, I did two and a half hours of intervals and hill repeats before the Thursday Nighter and I felt the same: slow, sluggish, sleepy. So no more sleeping half the day away. Gilad is having me sleep 8 hours a night tops. And now that I think about it, I’ve heard that athletes (like a 400-meter runner friend of mine) who get too much sleep have lethargic results.
After the intervals.
My body was finally somewhat awake by the time I turned into the church parking lot at Lorane and Bailey hill–just in time to enjoy the most boring and maddening Thursday Nighter I have ever had.
I spent the majority of the Thursday Nighter sitting on, not pulling–which is what Gilad wanted me to do. I was supposed to treat it like a race, not a workout, and win–or else I would never be allowed to go back to another one. I ended up taking second by about half a foot, even though I didn’t do shit during the ride. I felt like a slacker, and was bored and literally yawning back in the pack as the other guys had fun attacking and bridging gaps. I would glimpse down at my heart rate and see it slowly ticking at 150 or less. I have never done a Thursday nighter like this before and I hope I never have to again, because it was not fun. The front is where I belong god damn it!!
I’ll see all you guys at the rehearsal road race and the Albany crit. I’ll be the guy with the giant bags under his eyes due to insomnia. But my legs will be fresh. If too much sleep is a bad thing, then very little sleep should be a good thing. I’m thinking 20 minutes a night–like a giraffe. They’re fast, and it’s probably due to the extremely small amount of sleep they get.
KENNETT PETERSON 