Show me some tenderness

My legs are soar. Not with the typical deep down fatigue that you get after hard races and long blocks. But that tender to the touch soreness that you get when you haven't played soccer for 6 years and then sprint an entire game for 1 hr. Or haven't worked out at the gym for 3 years and you skip your 3 weeks of transition easy lifting and go for the gold with 3sets of 10.

In fact, I took Monday off to let rigor mortis set in real good, then on Tueday got on the trainer for a little bit, and was surprised how good the cycling legs felt. But walking down stairs really hurt.

It must be that eccentric vs concentric contraction thingy. Whichever one makes you more sore like from running that must be what those muscle cramps are. I'm having flashbacks of when I was standing on the trail and those wierd leg cramps hit. Imagine in place of your legs, solid planks. Where you cannot bend them at the slight degree necessary for walking. You can only with some serious effort, like stretching a thick rubber band bend all the way down in a squat.

Imagine your Vastus medialis muscle picking it self up and moving over by your Rectus Femorus muscle. (huh, huh, he said rectus)



The first thing that came to my mind was man look at how thin my legs look. Cause lately I've been spending an inordinate amount of time posing my huge quads in the mirror, and here all of a sudden a huge chunk had moved over.

The second thought was, I am screwed. I was just seeing myself squated holding on to my bike, telling passing racers to get help. And being stuck up there for hours into the early evening when some Search and rescue finally reaches me and then getting carried down.

Then later those inside of the leg cramps. Wheww, Eeee howdy shucks, those hurt. Like a 2x4 right in the gut. Awww man I hate it when that happens. Those hit on flat ground, and I had to go to the granny granny gear. That is slow. Real slow.

In retro spective I must have just blown all my cash on the first climb. I was middle ringin most of it, and when I hit a switch back, didn't gear down and spun the same gear and just stuck to the switch backs. I was following the 1st place Sport rider around a switchback and he geared down but I just kept the same gear and kept the cadence going and was on his wheel in a flash. But then I started thinking about the BLOG entry I should right on the importance of pushing big gears and before I knew it there was a 20' gap.. Stupid BLOG.

But it is a tough call. The lower gear you turn the more susceptible you are to variances in the trail (little rocks, etc). Pushing the higher gear allows you to be more stable and hopefully get to a higher speed and float more over stuff. But then you fry the legs sooner. I should have spun a lower gear for the first climb and tried to see how I'd do on the second mountain.

But I'd gotten myself all worked up into a frenzy to go off the line hard and to slam the first climb. I beat the masters winner to the top of the first climb. Come on, this guy practically lives at Douthat. This is what he does all day. Ride. I should not have been up there with him.

I wanted to not ride in survival mode like I always do. Sometimes you want to feel like the big boys and try and bridge gaps and make gaps. But then again, the price I pay is making regular survival mode turn into I am going to die out here and my new insurance policy isn't in place yet and will my wife chose to bury me with my road bike or my mountain bike mode.

Maybe one of these days I should try going out easy. So easy that it feels too easy and then turn it up later. But then what if I can't get psyched up to go hard later and then I lolly gag the rest of the race.... yada yada and I finish with lots of gas left in the tank. Tough call, but I oughtta try it at least once before I discount it.