My First Sweetspot Ride

This week I rode my first sweetspot ride. I made a course on the Computrainer named,"Utterly flat 21 miles". It is exactly that: straight and flat. I made the course that way because I don't have a good sense of wattage output on the bike. I sense my cadence to within 2 rpms and my heart rate to within 5 bmp as a result of 7 years of training with a bike computer and HRM. Watts...well, I know that 60 watts is a stroll in the park and 450 watts really hurts---in between is anyone's guess. So figured I'd start with a flat course on a trainer to eliminate variables such as wind, temperature, and grade. I just want my perceived exertion, watts, and cadence the only things on my radar and hopefully, some physical and cognitive connection will be made. Then I'll add grade and eventually while riding outdoors wind and temperature will be thrown into the equation.

Another change I've made for this season is to practice mental focus while training. It's easy to do with the harder workouts because you're a captive audience to your own pain. On the long easy sessions, I would think about grocery lists, do some birdwatching, and come up with names for roadkill. Not this year! On the runs, I've taken to counting my footfalls to keep a cadence of 90+ rpm. It's strangely mesmerizing and peaceful even while I'm running up hills. On the trainer, I've got numbers: watts, cadence, speed--and my mom's voice.

I am a graduate of Momma Boon's Culinary Boot Camp. My mother is an incredible cook, gardener, amateur botanist, and drill sargent. When we came to America in the early 70's, we lived in Brooklyn, just across the bridge from Chinatown. My father and brother are very picky eaters and only eat authentic Thai and Chinese food. Mom accomodates their gastronomic fussiness. As a result, I spent many hours of my childhood and teen years in her kitchen doing most of the cooking prep work. Because Thai and Chinese people don't eat with knives at the table, there's alot of cutting up of veggies and meat. Mom would stand over my shoulder as I was chopping/slicing, making shumai, washing veggies. She was constantly watching and coaching,"Too thick...too thin...that's cut unevenly...don't bruise the veggies!"

So I'm on the trainer, 300 miles from Mommycakes, and I hear,"Don't slouch on the aerobars...keep the pedal strokes even...that's a perfectly rolled eggroll!" Okay, she would never say any of those things. My point is that my internal discipline voice, the voice of HTFU is my mom's. It may sound nagging or mean to some, but to me--I'm hard-wired to have it motivate and encourage me. In reality, she would probably never stand over me while I rode my trainer and critique my cycling form. She's told me several times that all this cycling is going to give me huge calves like those people who ride rickshaw tricycles for a living. Well, I bet those rickshaw drivers could throw down some impressive bike splits!

I felt strong on the ride and the hour went by very quickly. I'm looking forward to the next one, but now it's time to go make some exquisite shumai and eggrolls.