The challenge of challenges

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Ah, Strava Challenges. Always fun, usually nearly impossible to complete (but that's what makes them challenges) and mostly just for bragging rights. I've glanced at the challenges on a regular basis, but only joined two. I completed one of them, but barely made a dent in the other one.The timing was great for the first one - got to use a race with lots of climbing for that one. As for the second one - yeah, right after a race where I needed to take some serious recovery time and not be riding my bike a lot. Part of the reason for that is I join for fun - and don't alter my training much while "competing" in the challenges. So I've tended to ignore the challenges or pick and choose carefully.

So what did I do for my goof off, end of season break? Joined three challenges that I am almost certain to not complete! It's going to be fun to see how far I get with just my normal training load, but there is no way I'm going to finish at least the first two. Why? The first one is the Oktoberfest 60 hour challenge - ride my bike 60 hours between October 20th and November 10th. Well, that's like double the normal hours I ride in a week - and I'm in recovery mode! But recovery mode has gotten me nearly 20 hours of riding with 12 days left. So I might get up to 50% of goal, maybe a little more. No huge, long sufferfest rides though - not that crazy. The other one I'm not going to get will be the Lace 'em Up challenge to run 50 miles this week. And while I used to run that much and more quite regularly, the most I've run in a week this year has been about 20. Again, I'm not going to force myself to run twice as much as I've been running - asking for injuries. So if I'm lucky, I might get 50% of that challenge, maybe a little more. Not going to push it. The third challenge isn't until December and it happens to fall on a weekend that I'm running my half marathon. So I have a chance to finish that one - will let you know!

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