No, we didn’t get a new pet, Milo is a character in a kids show.   It’s a cartoon called Milo Murphy’s law.  The general concept is that this kid, named Milo, has anything and everything go wrong for him.  He knows it,  his friends know it, and they go about their adventures and have to deal with all the things that will go wrong because Milo is involved.  I have felt a lot like Milo lately whenever I do my cycling training.

I generally look forward to my cycling.  I have an awesome stationary trainer.  I have my really cool power pedals.  I use Zwift which is like a video game to entertain myself as I am trying to get the work done.  I have my headphones and a t.v. right there should I want to have another form of entertainment.  Lately,  anything and everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong.  I am not just talking about once or twice.  I am talking one or more things go wrong, every time.  I have a limited number of hours in the morning to get my workout done before I have to get ready for the day.  When something goes wrong and I end up taking a bunch of time to fix it, then I have an issue.  The first time it started, I chalked it up to a bad morning.  I was upset, but got over it.  I can’t remember if it was short enough that once I got it all fixed I was still able to work out, or maybe I did it that evening.  Either way, I let it go.  Then it happened again…. and again… and again.  I cycle three times a week and for a couple of weeks in a row, every single time I went to do it, things went wrong.  My heart rate monitor would not connect.  Fine,  I will do it without capturing that.  My power pedal lost connection and that mean that even though I was pedaling away, my workout was not being captured.  I deleted and started over…. four times.  Finally I just did it without the power readings.  Those were important since the entire workout was based on the power output.  Other times, Zwift wouldn’t work.  Ok,  fine I can use other forms of entertainment and means to capture the workout.  Last week, several things went wrong at once on more than one occasion.  One time, I just lost it.  I broke into tears, said forget it and just went and had my pity party in the shower.

It’s really disheartening to push yourself to get in a mindset where you are going to give it your all and then not be able to do it.  It’s hard to come back to that after all that struggle and enjoy it.  Once is one thing, but over and over can really try a person’s patience.  Well,  it tried mine at least.  After my little breakdown, I came back to it later in the day and got the workout done.  Still, not everything worked right, but I made do.  I still kept feeling sorry for myself.  Why can’t things just go right for me?  Is this the universe telling me that I should just quit this nonsense?  Can’t just one of these go right?  As I sat there feeling sorry for myself, I tried to think about what I could do to prevent the issues and see if that could help.  So, the night before my next ride, I opened up the apps, activated all the sensors, tested all the connections and got everything working.  Awesome!  Set myself up for success!  I was excited for the next ride.

The following day, I got my water bottle and my laptop and went over to get moving!  I was really stoked.  I hopped on the cycle triggered all my sensors and got going.  This was going to be a ride!  Not two seconds into my power based ride, did my power meter complete bag out on me.  Not again!  Keep calm, I told myself.  It’s ok.  I had scheduled enough time this evening that I could crank this workout out and still have dinner on time and everything.  Ok, I can fix this.  I worked on connecting, disconnecting, reconnecting.  It took well longer than anticipated and I still could not get it connected.  I eventually remembered that my trainer can act as a power meter and connected that for now.  After more than 30 minutes of struggling, I had a band-aid I could use to at least get it done.  I had already wasted any extra time I had, and then some.  I got started on the workout.  About ten minutes into it, I realized that while I could certainly use the trainer as a power meter, it would have been a lot better to use if I had calibrated it.  So, there I was, struggling through the workout not sure if I had the correct power or not.  It seemed harder than it should have been, but maybe it was just that I was so beat from trying to fix it.  My heart rate was way up before I started.  Don’t take that to mean that it was reading my heart rate well, because it wasn’t.  If I were a patient in a hospital and you looked at the readings, you would think I died every few seconds because it kept losing connection.

I eventually finished the workout and felt great.  I didn’t lose my cool.  As much as I wanted to throw my cycling shoes across the house, smash my bike, the trainer and the t.v….. I didn’t.  I stayed mostly calm (I’m not gonna lie, I was really frustrated) and was able to get back into the correct mind-set once I got moving for a while.  The “I should just quit this crap” thoughts were eventually replaced with pride that I worked really hard during that ride and did a good job.

Darin and I had joked that I was the Milo of cycling workouts.  Whatever can go wrong always seems to go wrong.  I am still not sure what lesson I am supposed to learn, I guess it’s patience and maybe mental preparation.  On the show, Milo doesn’t even think about it.  He pretty much knows it will go wrong and it never phases him.  His friends know it could go wrong, and it doesn’t phase them either.  They hang out with him, literally knowing everything will go nuts.  Why? Well, it always works out in the end.  Guess it’s the same with my cycling escapades.  What can go wrong, pretty much does, but it all works out in the end.  I have a ride tomorrow.  Fingers crossed!