Note to Reader: The following is an excerpt from the unpublished blog of Kevin Burns, titled "The Road to Ironman Lake Placid 2014". It was found in his abandoned Honda Element up on Skyline Drive near Afton, VA on a flash drive. The flash drive was damaged and our experts are still trying to retrieve the data to help solve the mystery of what happened to Kevin Burns who mysteriously disappeared during a training ride. Kevin's Element was found on Oct 13, 2013 but the date of the entry shown below is in the near future. The experts are perplexed by the discrepancy in the date and contents of his blog. They are starting to think that something very strange is going on. The reader is asked to please contact the authorities if any clues to this mystery are found within the following blog entry that they may have missed or if the reader has seen or knows the whereabouts of Kevin. Please stayed tuned for updates to this blog as our experts try to solve this mystery.
this proved to be a expensive lesson learned! I do not think I will ever perform a speed workout on the treadmill until I puke ever again. Not only was the clean up costly but it was embarrassing as well. Hey, these things happen, what can you do!? Thanks again for reading my blog. I hope everyone gets something from it to help them achieve their own goals. Tomorrow I am heading down to Skyline Drive for a solo 5 hour ride in the mountains. Should be a lots of fun!
April 27, 2014: Long Ride on Skyline Dr. (5 hours):
Today I got up at 0400 and drove from Virginia Beach to the start of Skyline Dr. in Afton. It is 0800 and I am waiting for the fog to lift so I figured I would get a head start on today's blog entry. My legs are sore from my treadmill run yesterday so I expect a rather slow start to this ride.
Today I am going to work on visualization during the ride. It should help pass the time. I have been reading up on it and found this from about.com:
"Many elite athletes routinely use visualization techniques as part of training and competition. There are many stories of athletes who've used these techniques to cultivate not only a competitive edge, but also to create renewed mental awareness, a heightened sense of well-being and confidence. All of these factors have been shown to contribute to an athlete's sports success. Visualization has also been called guided imagery, mental rehearsal, mediation, and a variety of other things -- no matter the term, the basic techniques and concepts are the same. Generally speaking, visualization is the process of creating a mental image or intention of what you want to happen or feel."
Since I have done IMLP twice before, I am going to visualize the actual bike course while riding the hills on Skyline Dr. I hope this will make me feel like I have ridden the course numerous times and provide me with the confidence to crush the course on race day. For me a sub-6:30 ride would be great and hopefully I will have saved something for the marathon.
Ok, so if I understand the technique correctly, I will visualize how I am going to attack the bike course then hopefully what I have seen will come to fruition on race day. Seems almost supernatural to me like in the movie, Field of Dreams when the voice whispers "if you build it, he will come". I mean, if I do this correctly will a voice whisper to me "if you see it, it will happen" or something like that. I think everyone who follows this blog know that I have a very active imagination and a well documented fear of wild animal attacks! Ha ha ha! Should I worry that if I am using this technique and my mind drifts off into a daydream, then what I see in the daydream may come true? A solo ride of 5 hours can seem like forever sometimes and I do tend to daydream a little. This scares me because lately my daydreams have been a little odd. Maybe because I have been up late at night watching Land of the Lost episodes on Netflix. The daydream starts with me cruising at a very high rate of speed downhill when I suddenly enter a strange vortex and find myself transported back to the Jurassic age. A pterodactyl swoops down, grabs me in its talons and transports me back to it's nest. I am dropped into the nest with four hungry pterodactyl chicks. Yikes! I know, I know stupid right!?
Alright so this fog isn't lifting so I think I will just get on my bike and risk it. I brought my blinking red lights so I am sure to be safe. I will update today's blog entry when I return. Wish me luck! Bye for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment