My dilemma has been resolved. I’m going to do the Degani Kinglake ride and try to ease myself into rides that include a serious hill climb by doing the 70km one. Means I’ll probably be doing it on my own as the other person I know who’s doing it is going to do the 120km version. I suppose I could give the 120km one a crack. I have some time to train for it and I should be setting myself a challenge. If worse comes to worse and I find myself defeated by the hills, I’ll just have to get off and walk for a bit. Like no one has ever done that before!
Still, I think a lot of my problems are that I always tell myself I can’t do it. My attitude is one of defeat from the onset. The stupid thing is that I’m aware that I’m doing it. I told myself that Yarra Boulevard was too hard for me and I’m riding that twice a week now with improvement. Tiny little increments of improvement but still improvement. So why I do I always underestimate what I can do? It’s a similar thing to when I go clothes shopping, I always assume things aren’t going to fit. When I was in San Fran trying on jeans I had to go down three sizes before finding the right ones. I think that I’m still disgustingly fat even though I know I’m not. Okay, I’m still on the chubby side but I’m nowhere near as big as I was.
So, in my head, I’m still incapable of doing over 60km on the bike even though I knocked over 75km last weekend. I still think of myself as being weak when I’m probably not. I feel like I’m not improving on the bike at all but the question is am I actually restricting myself because of my attitude? I really don’t believe I can do 100km or that I can get up the big hills. My attitude from the onset is one of defeat and that’s stupid. Maybe I just need some encouragement and a bit of a nudge but I don’t know where to get it from.
I’m wondering if I’ve lost sight of why I ride. When I have a good ride, I feel sensational for the rest of the day but when it’s hard or I struggle, it knocks me for six. It was ridiculously cold yesterday morning so I was wearing multiple layers to keep warm, including a beanie which only just fit under my helmet and two pairs of gloves. But that left me feeling uncomfortable on the bike so it was a really hard ride. My friend who I was riding with has leapt past me in fitness and he left me behind on the hills and once or twice on flat sections. Plus, I underestimated how much energy I was burning and I took too long to eat so I started to feel really light-headed. I was on the verge of bonking and only just managed to stop it by sucking down an energy gel. It was a hard ride and I was really glad to get off the bike, which isn’t helping my attitude now because it looked like it was a cruise for my riding partner. But I did get up a footbridge with what must be at least a 15% grade that I couldn’t do before. I was very worried I was going to tip over but I did it so go team me!
I’m full of sighs about my SIDI shoes. I had a bike fit on Saturday which was quite interesting. My arm reach (fully extended with right finger tips touching the ground and left arm stretching up) is actually bigger than my height and I can reach about 2cm past the tips of my toes when sitting on the floor. He measured my shoes, my feet, my height, my bike, just about everything he could think of. He was pleased with the way I sit on the bike, especially with a back injury. He actually said he thought he’d have to make a few changes but he didn’t change anything at all. All he did was put my seat down a little as he felt I was stretching out a little too much.
He videoed me on the bike wearing both pairs of shoes and I’m not doing anything different that would cause the pain I’m experiencing with the SIDIs. However, measuring the shoes showed that the SIDS are a tiny bit smaller than the Shimanos, which is weird considering the SIDIs are marked a size bigger. They’re a narrower shoe and more rigid which he thinks is causing the pain. I have to decide what to do about them. Do I continue with them and try to stretch them in the hope the pain will stop? Or do I cut my loses and sell them? At the moment I’m thinking of selling them. They seem to be more hassle then they’re worth and there are plenty of other shoes out there.
