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A Coffee a Day…

So here’s the thing… I am exhausted. I am up all night, dropping by day and reviving myself with cups of my favorite caffeinated elixir, coffee.

And the real thing is I know what the culprit is. It is the coffee. Keeping me in a glorious catch 22 of coffee high, dependency crash, and back again – each day increasing my use by one more cup. Its call worse than those dealers you hear about around the schol yard “the first one’s free..”.

I’ve been this route before. Years ago I realized that I was the only one in the office drinking the two to three pots of coffee we made made daily. I removed the evil liquid from my diet for over 3 years. Then I had just one…

We’re going to try it again, removing coffee, I mean. And I say we because my family will be along for this emotional ride and perhaps, so will my blog <insert ominous music>. It will be interesting to see how this affects my hydration, etc. I’m not so sure it will be interesting to see how it affects my mood.

What’s working?

•    Training
•    Incremental Goals
•    Nutrition, Hydration
•    Sleep

I once went to a presentation by BNI’s Founder, Dr. Ivan Misner; in it he asked “What’s working?”.  The presentation discussed a business consultant that listened to all the problems in a failing business, but continued to focus on what’s working. While the business owner was aghast, assuming that the consult had gone mad by not addressing the problems, the business started to flourish by putting what was working first. This struck a cord with me during my solo ride on the Pacific Coast Highway last Sunday.

Training  – On that Sunday, I had ridden 3 days in a row, each day just a little more than the last. Team in Training puts us on an awesome training schedule of 4 to 5 months, depending on the season length. The schedule is an incremental one. Every Saturday is an incremental increase over the previous week, getting you ready for your Century Ride, with mid week rides to keep muscle memory. Muscle Memory is important in sports as well as physical therapy. It is based on the premise that the more often you do a certain muscular activity, the more likely you are to do it as needed, when needed.

Incremental Goals - My coach last season, Ramone Ocampo, had taught me to ignore the hill, ignore the total miles, ignore it all and just work baby steps. I hated it. He would ask me if I could get as far as the next intersection, the next driveway, the next whatever, pushing me like a sheep dog. This season, I’ve had to ride alone a great deal and I would hear his voice pointing out little goals as I went along. I have no idea when it changed, but during our week 18 of training for Solvang, I heard myself asking the very same things. By week 19 I was gleefully pointing things out that I had passed, “Driveway! Latigo Cyn Road! Mailbox! Grass Clump!” and so on. Might not be the incremental goals of the typical endurance athlete, but it sure helped during the amazing headwinds we tackled on Los Posas yesterday.

Nutrition, Hydration – This might be a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious), but the better set you are in both nutrition and hydration the better off you are. This is not just carbo loading (which I can’t do btw), but its watching your proteins and water intake before, during and after your rides. Everyone gives you the advice to drink and eat before you are hungry or thirsty. I haven’t been able to figure when that meant, until I recently realized that when is always (another BFO). What I’ve started doing is a little celebration of the miles. Every mile I take a drink, every 5 miles I get the big reward of Clif Bar nibbles.

Sleep - Sleep is the gas your body car needs to be at top performance. I have a terrible habit of napping and having shorter sleep cycles then adding up the days naps/sleep claiming to have had 8 hours rest. That was just not working well. I say well because it seemed to work, until I switched to hitting the hay on a real schedule in hopes of getting to sleep before my husband started snoring. It didn’t work in terms of avoiding the snoring by I did notice that my performance improved and my first 10 minutes of waking didn’t seem so groggy or clumsy. Just to prove my point to myself, I tried this over the last two weeks straight and continued to see that it should go on my list of “what’s working”.

Reason No. 5 to Ride

Reason number 5 to ride is what I learned about my body and how it works.

Did you know that your body consumes approx. 600 calories an hour when cycling BUT to effectively ride you need to take in at least 300 calories? Use those cycling jersey pockets and stock up on clif bars and almonds!

I also learned that it is not enough to hydrate during or the day of your ride but your body needs that hydration at least 3 days prior.