hubris, or okay, okay, I get it

would you believe one minute?

there I was, bragging about how great it was that I could recover in two minutes. the gods heard me, laughed at me, and said, fine, do it in one.

so I did.
but I'd really like to go on record as saying that it was difficult. and not something I'd like to repeat again soon. (today's work effort consisted of 8 zone five intervals, each 3 minutes long, with one minute of recovery between them.) I barely made it, I almost died, I am not worthy . . .
do you think the gods are listening and will be nicer to me next week?

I keep thinking about the fact that I am not going to want to do this to myself after power camp ends. I am going to want to go ride up my canyons and let my heart rate go wherever it will whenever it will.
maybe.
but then again . . .
last evening john and I drove out to tooele, to the Miller Motorsports Park, and pretended we were ferraris, eating up the track.
okay, not really. we pretended we were on bikes on a smooth, wide, flat race track with not a wisp of wind to interfere with our powerful laps. only two of those adjectives weren't reality (flat, windless) and we thoroughly enjoyed the wide, smoothly asphalted course with no glittering broken glass or other typical bike-lane debris.
and on the way out to the track, we passed the long, fairly flat road out to the salt lake marina.
seeing that stretch of fairly flat road and riding laps on the race track both sent thoughts of intervals to my resistant little mind. hmmm . . . there are opportunities, susan, where one can realistically do interval work . . . maybe it's time to think about incorporating these into your biking life.

oh, I feel the pull.
I donwanna.
I want to ride and feel the air on my skin and climb my hills and swoop and be free to work as hard as I want and to slack off when I need to. this is unregimented, this is freedom, this is joy.
I donwanna make it into work.

but what if that "work" makes my carefree riding even more enjoyable because I'll be faster-stronger-better?
this is my see-saw struggle.

and I know the issue will not be resolved today.
or even next week.
but my mind is chewing on it all, and I foresee resolution of some kind at some point.

I'm pretty sure, though, regardless of my decisions, that I will allow myself more than one minute of recovery between exertions.
because humble little me can't possibly recover in just one minute ~ I can barely do it in two ~ I'm not in the least bit worthy of those one-minute challenges . . .

can you all hear me out there?
humility seeps from my every pore . . .