Realistically, my race was over before I even finished the first day: I stopped for pizza in Monmouth OR about 20 miles before my intended stopping point, and when I got back on my bike, my Achilles\u2019 tendons were super tight. They got tighter and more swollen with each day. I tried a few things to remedy them, to no apparent avail.<\/p>\n
And I know that all racers are dealing with this, but I was not prepared for how much my ass would hurt. And my knees were a little delicate, which made standing to take pressure off my ass a problem.<\/p>\n
I called Gwen from my bike and told her \u201cThis isn\u2019t fun. This isn\u2019t even type-2 fun.\u201d And I had a moment of clarity later in the day when I realized that I was riding an amazing route through an amazing landscape, and by any reasonable measure, this should be one of them best rides off my lifetime. But all I could think about was pain.<\/p>\n
During my training, I had tried to have all my problems before I would have them in the race. And I\u2019m sure there were a bunch of problems I was able to solve in advance. But there were some I could not, and in some cases, I think I was solving the wrong problem.<\/p>\n
First of all, there\u2019s no way to train for mountains when you live in the hill country. The experience of a single hour-long climb is just different.<\/p>\n
Second, I thought I had more or less inured myself too ass pain through long training rides. Nope.<\/p>\n
Third, I was riding harder on my training rides than I did in the race. I thought I had an idea of the aches and pains I\u2019d have in the race based on my training rides. In fact, the pains I was experiencing prevented me from riding as hard in the race as I would on a training ride, so the experiences were pretty different. My average heart rate on a training ride would be in the 120s, which it was for Day 1 of the race. But it went down quite a bit after that, meaning fewer calories burned, less muscle aches.<\/p>\n
Fourth, I just don\u2019t know how I could have anticipated or prevented the tendinitis. I\u2019ve never had a problem like that before.<\/p>\n
. . .<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t regret having tried. I\u2019m disappointed to drop out. But more disappointed to discover that I am not a person who can do this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Realistically, my race was over before I even finished the first day: I stopped for pizza in Monmouth OR about 20 miles before my intended stopping point, and when I got back on my bike, my Achilles\u2019 tendons were super tight. They got tighter and more swollen with each day. I tried a few things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabr-2021"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}