Forced Rest Week

In some ways, this is a very good thing. Going from Ironman to Cyclocross with what could barely be considered a rest week was a tough transition, and while I'm having a great time with 'cross, it's been pretty tiring. So, fractured cheek and pain aside, being on the sidelines for a few days was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Don't get me started on all the health insurance hoops I have to jump through now though. Talk about a hassle! (Especially since I didn't need an ambulance in the first place, but the doctors insisted.)

But my cheek is healing and my body is resting, though while taking a week off (with the exception of a couple teensy tiny bike rides and an hour of running), I've been feeling pretty gross. It's amazing how much time I have when I'm not training, but it's also shocking how out of shape I feel after a couple of days. I know it's in my head, but still!!

Classes and tutoring and work are going... insane. I think my head is about 1 step away from explosion/implosion with the amount of stuff I have on my plate, and to make things nuttier, I'm suddenly re-evaluating my whole 4 year plan in terms of what I want to do. The end goals are still the same, but I've had to start thinking about alternative (money-saving) ways to get to those ends. Regardless of what I do after the semester, I still have to finish this semester, so I'm trying to not think about it too much, but not ignore it either. Some of it is scary because I know that choosing certain routes will leave me out of school for the moment, and it scares me, not being a student anymore. It was inevitable, I know, but I define myself so much as a student that I think I've already made certain decisions based on wanting to stay in school, versus what's better in the long term. Still, I have no regrets. Right now, I love my classes, I feel like I'm doing well in them and I have them well under control. Ditto tutoring. If this keeps up, I see a potential 4.0 in my future. I hope.

In other news, cyclocross is on hold for the weekend because of a work thing, but Sunday will be a solid training ride and skills session with Dad, who raced his first race at Whirlybird CX this weekend, sporting bib shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. I love him. He did awesome, and everyone went nuts cheering for him, since he was so far back but was just having a blast. I was exhausted from being nervous about him (after witnessing him topple 4 or 5 times on our practice lap), and during his race, I was sprinting all over the course to cheer for him.

My race started really well, since I actually had a callup to the second row thanks to racing the weekend before. I started great, got clipped in immediately, and felt comfortable. Maybe too comfortable, since I skidded out HARD on gravel and went down. Two of my other teammates did the same thing- the gravel was super loose and slippery and if you didn't know that, you probably ate $@%#. My leg and elbow and hand were bleeding a lot and gravel covered, but I kept racing. However, during the crash, I got passed by a lot of girls, and because of the discomfort from crashing, I never caught back on.

However, I did FINALLY LEARN TO REMOUNT!! It was very exciting during the race, being able to pass girls after barriers because I was able to hop on my bike. This was a huge coup for me last week at CX practice. Thanks to Mark and Pat's excellent coaching, I somehow managed to go from dismounting on the wrong side and not being able to mount at all to being able to dismount and remount easily. It was amazing. I felt like a little kid, demanding that Charlie and Matt watch me dismount, and I was so proud of myself when Charlie was yelling that I did it perfectly. They said they thought I had known how to do it the whole time and had just been messing with them by dismounting and remounting terribly.

I love my teammates.

So basically, it's been a very long week, and though I should be stoked that it's Friday, I'm more looking forward to Sunday, which for me is going to mean the re-start of my training.

Aside from a shift in training from endurance to a schedule made to emphasize CX training and to minimize time training, I also really need a serious re-vamp of my eating habits. Robbie and I have been super busy lately and I feel like because of it, we're way more willing to eat like total crap. Also, I should never ever ever buy Reeses and candy corn. They're like my Kryptonite. So I need to put some serious focus on eating right. Basically, I need to get good really really fast, since Nationals are coming up, and pretty soon decisions about who gets to go to Nats are going to be made, and I want to at least be in serious contention to go. I think it would be a blast, and I really think that I can improve. I already managed to learn remounts, and they were my "white whale" of cx, so who knows?