Why Didn't Anyone Tell Me?

I guess it should have been common sense, but yesterday I found out for sure. Intervals really don't work on the trail.

I went out to Burchfield late yesterday afternoon to catch the last little bit of unseasonably warm weather. I was feeling a lot better than I had on Tuesday, so I decided to pick up my plan of doing intervals on the ski trail.

I gave up after the first interval because I realized, at least with my current system, which was a digital stopwatch on my wrist, doing intervals was imprecise at best, and probably completely impossible. There's no way I could look at my watch the entire time I was riding without running myself into a tree, because although the trail is pretty easy and flat, it's still a trail, after all. I was also on my cross bike, which meant I had to watch for particularly large roots and other obstacles, lest I be catapulted from my bike.

Plan B was to just to try to push as big of a gear as I could to make it harder. When I came to a hill (few and not very big), instead of shifting, I just stood up to try to power up the hill. It was a lot of work and I got tired after about 15 minutes. Then I switched to an easier gear and cooled down for 10 minutes.

In total (including my slow warm up), I was only on the trail for about 35 minutes, but I was pretty tired and my legs feel a little twingey today. This weekend, when the weather turns winterish, I'm going to set up my trainer to do some real intervals. For now, though, I at least have three rides down in my goal to complete five before the next Kisscross race.