Cookies and milk...

Before bedtime - must have been an idea from one of the greatest minds of humanity - maybe Jesus, I don't know. Before sprint intervals on your bike, not such a good idea, actually... and you can guess which, not so great mind that idea came from. No, not Gered... me. If you follow my free from tv blog, you'd find in yesterday's post that with the time after school where I usually watch TV, I chose to try pan frying (and of course eating) some cookie dough. I probably had 2 pan fried cookies, one cooked medium, and the other cooked well well well done. While experimenting, I probably ate 2 more cookies worth of straight dough. As a compliment, I of course had 2 glasses of milk.


That's when things got dumb. I then proceeded to get on my bike for an hour and a half - usually not a problem, even with a belly full of cookies and milk. But yesterday's workout included 8x1:00 sprint intervals. I figured, "How bad could it be?" Turns out pretty bad. Dumber still, I chose to video chat Gered in between some of the intervals so that I could have some accountability for finishing the set. He proceeded to ineffectively heckle me during exertions. As a witness to the event, he got to watch me wrestle with nausea around numbers five and six. Nausea that occurred likely because (1) it's a feeling that can often come about as a result of these super high intensity/long recovery repeats and (2) I was dumb enough to eat cookies and milk before doing this workout.

In any case, my experiences as a seriously competitive athlete of 12 years tell me that (minus injury related pains), the most agonizing workouts are often the most powerful tools to add to your training repertiore. That being said, for the sake of putting that snap back into your race pace riding, this is definitely a workout you should consider:

30 minutes aerobic effort
8 x 1:00 max effort
      2:00 - 4:00 EZ
20 minutes aerobic effort

10 minutes cool-down effort

Brace yourselves for a surprisingly painful, but highly rewarding workout. And a word to the wise: Save the cookies and milk for afterward...