The hardest part of training...

Well, I tried to do an interval workout on the way into work yesterday but my legs just wouldn't get the oomph back into them. Though my heartrate was at record lows (45 bpm) this morning I think I am a bit overtrained, or calorie deficient. I hopped the light rail to get to work so I could cut a few miles off and was dismayed to find I could have probably ridden faster in. Oh well. I need to get the legs juiced back up before Saturday as the climb up Nebo is seriously intense and long. I'm taking a few days off and eating like a pig. I think the problem is I have been shorting myself on too many calories, especially last week with the extra mileage I did. So today I am taking it easy and going to pack the new steed into the back of our van amid the luggage (carefully of course) and drive to a land of epic climbs and flat farmlands. Utah is really quite a land of contrasts. On one side you have all the 1950s apple pie Donna Reed, Richy Cunningham, Opie Taylor Mormons and on the other you have the Ski towns on the opposite end of the spectrum with the night life and beer commercial backdrops. From a cyclist's perspective there is the flat rides of the farms and valleys, and yet, a few miles to the east you can be sweating at 10%+ in steep canyons climbing the Wasatch front range in aspen and fir forests amidst high mountains with patches of snow on them into July. There are 2 epic climbing routes within 20 miles of my Sister's house. One is the Mount Nebo Loop which by the time I ride to it, over, and then back through Nephi I will have as much time riding on flats as I will climbing the 5000' foot hill, it should be about 100 miles and 6000 feet of climbing, almost all of it in the one hill. The other epic ride is the Alpine Loop. It's not as much climbing but the scenery is epic. It goes through Timpanogos cave national monument on one side, and down through Sundance Ski area on the other. You circle Mt. Timpanogos in the process. The climbs though not as tall are steep and the air is thin. I hope I am recovered. I am eager to see how I handle the climbs with the new compact crankset. We'll see. Now to rest, the hardest part of training.