Choosing to respond.

Being so busy, attending the bike show,meetings and building our shop has left me feeling frustrated and angry with myself for missing two training sessions in the week.

So, I spent a little bit of time thinking. I know that these feelings came from 'unfulfilled expectations' (I wanted to do the training as well as the other jobs) .
I then realised that I had chosen to do the jobs that,to me, had a higher priority. I need bikes to race, regardless of my fitness!

From reading '7 Habits of effective people' I am awear that there is a gap between something happening (Stimulus) and how I act to what has happened (Response). This is great because now I am aware of this I can choose to respond in away that empowers me. I have done this with my own thoughts realising that bikes are more important than fitness.

So, these frustrating feelings subsided and I was able to concentrate on making sure I could get out for my next session as soon as I could.

That session came today in the form of a Lactate Threshold (LT) cycle ride. I absolutely love these sessions. It requires riding the bike as fast as I can for 1 minute with 1 minutes recovery and repeating a total of ten times (After warming up and finishing with a cool down!).

My hear rate was quite low (only reaching 170-175 in my minute sprints) compared to results in the past, so I know, I need to make extra effort to perform these sessions to the best of my ability to get improved results. I must admit that the last two sprints where loud with the breathing and I had the feeling of wanting to be sick and I still LOVE these sessions!

Usually, I ride with headphones on and listen to the radio on my phone, it's a twenty mile road circuit I use and it's great to listen music as I ride. Today though, I have downloaded a few albums from my computer, D12, Jamiroqui,Now55 and Otis Reading, on to an MP3 player (I used to use a Mini ipod) and I was looking forward to listing to D12. Instead, I got the first track from each album and then the second track and so on. So, although I only hear my breathing on the hard sections of the ride, the recovery sections varied between rap, pop and soul music!