The Sprinting Machine

Today was supposed to be the Frostbite Time Trial, up north of Fort Collins.  The weather was looking a little sketchy, so I decided a few days ago that I was going to skip it.  Glad I did.  Today, the weather report up there was about 12° and snow.  Probably high winds, too.  The first rider was supposed to go off at 10am.  At about 9am, they finally officially canceled the race.  It sounds like they might reschedule for next Sunday.  I already have a race planned for Saturday, so I don't know if I would plan on a Saturday and Sunday race.  We'll see.

Instead of the time trial, I was going to just get in a long endurance workout today.  But life got in the way.  First, my daughter had a soccer game.  Then, my son had to go to a friend's birthday party.  While he was at the party, my wife, daughter and I went out to lunch, where I ate like crapola.  Then, we picked up my son, and surprised them by taking them to see The Lego Movie.  Awesome flick, by the way.  ♫ Everything Is Awesome! ♪♫  Then, after that, we stopped at the new Noodles restaurant in the neighborhood and picked up some dinner.  Got home, relaxed for a bit after a long day away, and then finally got around to getting ready to hop on the bike.

By that time, I really didn't have time for a 2-hour endurance workout.  Instead I opted for the hardest short workout I could find, Spinervals 20.0 - The Sprinting Machine.  Rated 9.9 out of 10 on the Spinervals intensity scale, this is one of the hardest interval workouts I've ever done.  On paper, it doesn't sound that hard.  10 seconds of hard work, followed by 50 seconds of rest for 5 minutes, with long breaks in between sets.  But the hard work is really as hard as you can go.  Or harder.  Even with plenty of rest, it's just brutal.  And then, to really make a mess of everything, in the middle of the workout, you get off the bike and do plyometric squat-jumps for 30 seconds, get on the bike and pedal easy for 2 minutes, for three reps total.  A really, really hard 50 minute workout.  I know I'm going to be feeling this tomorrow.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Chicken bacon ranch quesadilla at Chili's.  And chips and queso.  And a skillet cookie with ice cream.  What can I say, it was a fun lunch with my daughter.
• Dinner:  Went  to noodles, but avoided the noodles.  Stuck with low-carb, and went with a chicken Caesar salad.

Exercise:

• Spinervals 20.0 - The Sprinting Machine.  Ugh.

Today's weigh-in:  187.6

And for an overall look at how I'm doing, here's a chart for all of February.  This certainly isn't as good as I was doing last year, but I guess it's a very slight downward trend, so I'm kind of pleased.  I can do better, though.