I had one of my coach’s challenging bike workouts to do tonight, and it turned out to be quite a challenge.

As I wrote about in my post about polarized training a few days ago, it is important to push really hard in your hard workouts.  So, as I set about pushing high power during tonight’s interval sets, I was determined to do better than when I did this exact same workout on Tuesday night.

The workout started out great and was going really well, until interval number 12 of my second set.  During the previous few intervals, I could feel a slight cramp building in my left calf.  I was hoping to get through the set of intervals, so I could hopefully deal with the cramp during the recovery section before the third set.  It turns out I couldn’t.

Right at the end of interval number 12 of that second set, I got a full on, major cramp in my calf.  It was bad.  I could not get it to go away by stretching while on the bike, so I had to get off the bike to stretch and walk it off. 

Now I was faced with a choice … ride out the workout or push hard again and risk it coming back.

This is where the mental challenges of triathlon training can really play tricks on you.  I was convinced, that if I pushed high power again, the cramp would come back.  This concern could totally justify me riding out the workout at low power.  I must admit, I was close to doing just that.

Instead, I decided to do that 13th interval anyway, but at slightly lower power than the target of ‘all out’ power.  I got through the interval, but I could feel the cramp starting again.  Now I had another choice to make; do I try to push hard again, when that third interval set begins in three minutes?  I ended up deciding… let’s at least try pushing hard one more time.

Well, the body is a strange thing.  I managed to get through the whole final interval set, without even the slightest feeling of cramping at all.  As a result, the overall workout turned out great; I pushed much higher power than during the same workout on Tuesday.

So, by deciding to put aside the mental question marks, and deciding to push through adversity, I ended up completing a great session.  It was good lesson tonight.