Makes me want to hammer…

Sometimes I miss those days, the days of top race fitness, when I felt like I could throw down anywhere, anytime.  I remember finishing up my senior season of racing in college, and joining the cycling team for some intervals a couple of weeks later after barely riding a bike all winter.  I remember throwing down in a big way on some repeats on the three-mile climb up to Petersberg Pass and the NY/MA border.  I remember the pain, but the pain was not a hindrance, it was like feeding time – I just wanted more.  I would get uglier and uglier on the bike (I could here Phil Ligget’s word ‘he’s absolutely disgusting on the bike’), but I kept the speed up, and it fed the demon.

Right now I miss that feeling.  I miss being able to hammer without my body’s reprimand.  I miss the burning lungs after hard intervals, the feeling of spent legs, the dehydration headache I always seem to get, and the dull glow and voracious apatite afterward.

I don’t know what it is that’s caused it.  Maybe it was anything but that feeling in the 30k I did on Sunday.  Maybe it was catching the amazing Birkie results of some friends from Anchorage on Saturday.  Maybe it’s been the clips of World Champs racing I’ve snuck in between trying to schedule and prepare for what seems like it must be the busiest month of the year (March) the last few days.  Probably it’s some combination of the above.

One of these days I may just have to get up early and hammer some hills (’Boston training’).  Maybe I’ll just take a flier or two through the stadium while testing wax for state.  Whatever it is, there is something raw, something primal that needs to be sated.  I just hope it’s still there tomorrow…

Feels kind of like that…