First big weekend

Many years ago, before I was a mom, I trained for the Trans Provence and put in as much as 14 to 16 hours a week. It did cause some friction between me and my partner, but we agreed it was just for this one event and only 6 months of training. Now, I am here training for the Torino Nice Rally. Probably much harder and I should possibly train just as hard as last time. But I won’t.

Time crunched

I am not prepared to sacrifice that much time away from my family and to be as difficult to live with like last time. Personally, I have no problems dodging social events like birthdays, but it’s no fun for my partner to always have to go solo with the kids. So instead, I just have to make do with the time I have and pick a few moments to do a bit more. Like this weekend. I did a big ride on Saturday and on Sunday.

The week leading up to that weekend was super busy and stressful. My HRV on Friday was 0.3. It hasn’t been this low since I had corona in March… after testing I knew it wasn’t corona, so it must have been the stress. Not the ideal start of a big weekend…

The route I planned for Saturday was new to me. I was looking for ways to connect “My favourite things” with Planken Wambuis and this was to experience that region. Though the gravel was very nice, there was a lot of asphalt on the route. I tried to take it easy and just enjoy the ride, knowing there was also Sunday. My HRV climbed to 5.2 (maximum score is 10) so that was pretty good. I arrived home a little past eight at night and went to bed around 21:30 with about 100km done on day 1.

And everything would have been fine if I only had a nice sleep that night.

But I didn’t. It took me forever to fall asleep – of course – and nightly constructions outside.

Ideal training

I woke up even more tired. But I guess that’s what’s going to happen during the TNR too right? I always sleep horribly when I’m excited about something, or when I sleep in a strange bed or when the stars and the planets do not align…

So basically I created the perfect training conditions for day 2. Tired and with a sore butt.

Day 2 started out with an hour of finding the right position to sit. It took a while before the correct position settled and I could forget about the pain in the butt and just ride.

After about 70 kilometres I started to feel nauseous from being tired. I started making some shortcuts in my mind but also tried to keep enjoying the phenomenal gravel in front of me. My legs were just fine and no back pains, that’s something to be grateful for right? It was the rest of me that was tired and missing a bit of edge to push longer than 112km.

When I arrived home, I was super tired but I felt better after a few hours. And after a day of eating on Monday, I was feeling back to normal again, with my HRV between 9.5 and 10. Not bad. It even seems like I caught up with my trajectory in TrainingPeaks.

In my mind, I can make it at least to Briançon. 2 months to go to make it all the way to Nice.