Crushed

A bit of a horrible session this morning. If you measure how much good a session does you by how much it hurts, then this one should have me absolutely flying.

I hit the wall on the bike today quite spectacularly. In fact hitting the wall may be underselling it, I ran smack bang, flat out, straight into the wall. Not exactly what you want a week out from a race, but at the same time I am trying to not read to much into it. Still trying to figure out what went wrong though.

 The ride was very similar to the session I had a week out from Mandurah. On paper it looks harmless enough. A fairly short ride (90km) with some hill repeats and some long efforts. In some ways I think its appearance on paper was part of the problem, I possibly went into it a bit too blase. As a result I walked out the door with almost no nutrition. It is just 90km I thought to myself. Novice mistake. Just goes to show that we all make silly errors sometimes. I am fairly fit, but that makes no difference if you run out of fuel. Once the body is running on empty it is running on empty, being fit isn't going to help that situation. 90km is far enough that you probably aren't going to get through unscathed without taking on fuel. I don't know for sure but I suspect that was the main issue this morning. That is certainly how it felt, like a classic bonk, I just completely ran out of the ability to ride.

The ride was made up of some hill repeats and then a long effort, twice through. The first set of hill repeats went quite well and so did the first effort. After that half of the ride I was struggling a bit, but still moving. The second set of hill repeats were a little rough around the edges but I got through. It wasn't until I got to the last long effort that I really exploded. I got through around 10 minutes, but then the wheels really fell off (not literally). From there I struggled through the session, but the rest of the effort was nowhere near where it was supposed to be.

It was a bit of a surprise really. I haven't properly bonked on a ride for a very long time. Part of me wonders if this cold that I have had played any part, but I have had some really good sessions this week, so I am not so sure. I am inclined to think it was just a silly mistake. Another factor is that I may have been having some power meter errors. I am not sure, it seemed to be working fine at the start of the ride but part way through I tried to recalibrate the power meter and I got an error telling me that one of the pedals wasn't reading properly. it happens when the transmitter pod isn't plugged in properly. There isn't much you can do to fix that problem out on the bike so I rode on with error, but I have no idea what it meant to my power readings. So there is a possibility that I completely crushed myself chasing power levels on an inaccurate power meter. Not sure about that one though.

I am feeling fairly terrible at the moment, but I am hoping that with a good night's sleep I will be good to go. Really I am keen to get on with training tomorrow and put this one behind me.