Trying to recover

I’ve been having a hard time recovering from the last couple of races. First there was State TT a couple weeks ago – I think I squeezed every last drop of juice out of my legs that day. Then last Sunday was the State crit and it’s 100+ degree heat. Not only did my monster effort at the end kill me, but it was all for naught (I thought there were still some top ten slots up for grabs, only to find out afterwards there were 3 guys in between the break and the main group)! It took about a half hour of drinking afterwards and pouring cold water on my head (thanks, Ken!) before I could breath instead of gasp. I ate a DQ Flamethrower double bacon cheeseburger and an Oreo cookie blizzard on the way home – nothing like 100 g of fat to speed muscle recovery! I continued to drink for the rest of the day and still didn’t pee I don’t think until I went to bed that night. On Monday I did an easy recovery ride over lunch – it was weird, the legs didn’t feel that bad, I just had a hard time breathing. I figured I’d be fine for Tuesday night crits, but again I had a hard time breathing whenever I did the slightest bit of a hard effort. I tried to bridge to a breakaway late in the A race, but that killed me so I just hid in the pack and waited for the end. I worked hard to get back to the front for the final lap, only to pop going into the last climb and have to just roll in – man, I hate tanking it on the last lap. Fortunately the B race was considerably slower – I didn’t really try anything and gradually moved towards the front during the course of the race and had a decent finish. Tonite was the Hub ride, but there was a little bit of rain on a little patch of road somewhere in West County and so the ride was cancelled – pussies! Still a few guys I didn’t know showed, and so I rode with them in lonely anonymity until Martel caught up with us and I had somebody to talk to. Good thing he was still feeling the need to recover, too – the last time I showed up for this ride (my first time) he just about ripped my legs off! One guy with big hairy legs made me nervous, but he was gone after the first climb. None of the others seemed interested in hammering, and Chris and I spent a lot of time on the front keeping a pace we liked, so it was a good ride and my legs felt better afterwards for the first time since – well, I guess before the State TT! I’ve got another TT in 2 weeks up near Chicago, so I’ll do a few more threshold interval workouts – otherwise it’ll be the Tuesday night crits to bone up for Gateway Cup.