Afternoon Ride

You’re never as good as the day your power meter is miscalibrated

Cape Workout

Breakfast with Big Boz

Oof that was rough. Tempted not to post this but….had some dumb fall plan to get something from my 2025 season and TT BCC, LCC, and AF separately for the KOMs. Like 8 days ago did a pretty hard trial of LCC in full sun midday two mins off the KOM at 398w and then a couple days later did this at 384w also a couple mins off the KOM. I figured, based off of that, with latex tubes, clean bike, skin suit, taper, bicarb, etc I could get them and BCC potentially.

But I did have a bunch of tension about this. Call me crazy but putting up some decent bike efforts earlier this year actually stressed me out because I started thinking fuck maybe my ceiling is higher cycling and I should try and compete more in that in the future. I love love biking but obvi it’s like the worst sport to get into unless you’re like under 23 yo. Plus I knew if I acutely kept doing this bike shit this year I’d compromise myself for ski season…..allegedly my actual sport. 

Training has been great since mount Washington but I think, there’s a possibility, I was pushing both the speed work and the base work too hard. I tapered like five days for this and felt really really good yesterday and during the warmup. Anna waxed and cleaned my bike and helped me shave and get a skin suit 😹. Thanks Anna 😘. Defintely set the record for the most effort put into an AF TT. 

Felt really good at first and goal was to hold 420 for the first five miles or so and then slowly fade with the altitude to 400? Pretty soon in my legs did not feel great. Maybe my legs just aren’t as resilient to biking as they are to downhill running etc and I was carrying more “deep” fatigue than cleared in a short taper/than I could even perceive, I certainly felt fresh in the warmup, maybe my power goal was too high (i think it was fair, I did average 398 in LCC in full sun no taper last week). 

Was probably the most intense localized muscular fatigue I’ve ever had. Hurt way worst than Washington. I don’t think this was a mental burnout issue, my legs felt like they were giving birth. I now understand why people do low cadence work 😹. 15 mins in I was thinking shit I could stop now and this would be a hard workout 😹. I was trying to get out of the saddle but I felt like my legs were going to buckle my quads were so jello. Legs felt maybe like they did the first couple bike workouts I ever did back in early July. 

I was watching the power close and about halfway up I couldn’t take it anymore and switched over to a screen that was just cadence. I tried to push and ride of RPE but just couldn’t drive the legs any harder. (Despite my sister and Anna cheering, thanks guys)

It’s just wild with cycling how you can make all these interventions to reduce drag and rolling resistance and weight and do the effort in better temps, pedal like 14 more watts average, and only ride like seven seconds faster. There was some sort of tiny minuscule head wind at the start and must have been a tail wind when I did this last time, damn these segments are tricky! 

Anyways. That will probably be it for me and the bike. Im all for relative comparisons and progress and success, but the amount pain I went through is not worth it for third or whatever on a Strava leaderboard 😹. I’m certainly very proud of this and my progress on it and, in a way, I’m relieved I am probably a better runner and skier than cyclist, or at least as good. I think some of me would want to see out my potential if the reverse was really true, and again I find riding the bike so fun, but racing competitively seems basically impenetrable. 

Blah blah. Clearly I need a reset and some deep mental coaching/therapy from a specialist in lunatics but I am looking forward to ski season. And some easy bikes this fall.

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Jack Kuenzle

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Afternoon Ride

You’re never as good as the day your power meter is miscalibrated

Cape Workout

Breakfast with Big Boz

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