There are no impossible dreams

I’m very tired this evening after doing a hard brick workout earlier in the day. My training plan called for a 1 hour S4 bike ride. S4 means a fartlek-style workout. I chose to do the Suffer-o-rama Spinervals DVD on my bike trainer for 40 minutes, then run on the treadmill for 20 minutes. I’m doing more brick workouts…trying to train my legs to run at a pace of 8 after a hard bike effort.

I’ve been a bit complacent during my weekley Spinervals workouts. When I first started doing them, it was incredibly difficult. They are still really hard now, but I can make it through each interval without ‘cheating’ by stopping to rest. Today, I decided to take it up a notch by looking at my cadence meter and trying to maintain a certain rpm level during the intervals. I wished I had that Nashbar Wattmaster trainer, so I could instead look at power levels. But I don’t, so I tried to ‘feel’ the power in my body while I spun thru the hard sets and looking at the cadence meter…sort of feeling the best most powerful way to spin and hold the effort. It kind of worked actually, if that makes any sense. At least I felt powerful.

The run part of this brick workout was a threshold run that I had previously programmed into my ifit treadmill. It was a 5 sets of 5 minutes at 7.6 mph, 30 seconds of 9mph where I did the pose running drill, then 2 minutes rest at 4mph. I had to cheat during the first two hard sets, by jumping off and resting for 20 seconds. I got through the third set without cheating – yeah. I decided to skip the last two sets, thinking that sometimes less is more. I once read that (can’t remember where)…and that you should stop really hard workouts with just one interval left in you.

As I type I’m listending to Ozzy Osbourne’s I Just Want You”.

There are no impossible dreams
There are no invisible seams
Each night when the day is through
I dont ask much
I just want you
I just want you
…
There are no unachievable goals
There are no unsaveable souls
No legitimate kings or queens, do
you know what I mean? Yeah

If you had said to me ten years ago that someday I’d be listening to Ozzy Osbourne and racing triathlons , my reply would have been “Yeah, right”. I am such a different person now. I used to hate metal and hard rock music. And never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever be an athlete.