Hell Week

Typically I will do two round trip commutes from Encinitas to HB during the work week. It normally works out to Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and Thursday night/Friday morning. Last week I wanted to ramp up my training miles, so I committed to three round trips. Each leg is 65 miles so I was looking at a 390 mile week from Tuesday night through Friday morning's commute.

To prepare for this, Brandy sent me to work on Tuesday with four days worth of meals, which I'm sure my co-workers appreciated, considering I hogged up all of the space in the refrigerator. Along with that, she prepared bags of Sportquest supplements (Recover pills and baggies of Interphase and Carbo Pro which I would use pre-ride) along with multivitamins and extra Vitamin C and Vitamin E. What a sight I must have been making multiple trips into the store with all of my loot, I'm sure that it looked like I was moving in.

I would post more about what this experience was like, but honestly, it was one big blur of work, ride, eat, sleep, eat, ride, work, eat, ride...rinse and repeat. I averaged eight hours a day on the bike last week and though I was exhausted with the lack of rest time between legs, I felt pretty good considering. My routine when I was off the bike consisted of cleaning up and immediately putting on my Skins compression garments. I feel like these played a significant role in my recovery. Typically on big mileage weeks like when I was commuting frequently in preparation for Furnace Creek 508, Brandy would have to use the massage stick on me nightly. While that would have been nice last week, she was putting in significant mileage herself and was too exhausted to "stick me." Thank goodness for Skins when the girlfriend is slacking on her girlfriendly duties. Kidding. ;)

Up next...an abbreviated commute week in prep for the San Diego Brevet Series 300K Brevet on Saturday January 19, 2008. I will be doing the full commute on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. On Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I will take the Metrolink train for a portion of the commute and ride the rest. This way I will still get some easy miles in for consistency, and give my legs a chance to recover for the brevet on Saturday.