Taking the good with the bad

The past few days have been a nice little reminder that while consistent high quality training will ultimately lead to good results, there may be some bumps along the way. Wednesday's afternoon workout was not so great and then Thursday's 2x20 was just downright terrible. Or aweful... whichever is worse. The PE was high but the power just wasnt there. And it wasnt just barely not there... it was like Zn4-intervals-at-Zn3-power" not there. On the other hand, Friday I had a great workout. It was a 1h bike + 50min Zn3 run + 10min cooldown and I hit the last two miles of the Zn3 part in 5:45, 5:38 and felt nice and relaxed. Similarly, Saturday's 3h ride, the third workout of the day, also went really well as I had no problem keeping the wattage in upper Zn2 on the flats and Zn3 on the climbs. So the moral of the story? While quantitative feedback is great, every once in a while you have just take a bad workout for what it is, move on, hope the next one is better, and remember that it is just a workout and not a race. Plus lets face it, if every workout goes great then you probably arent training enough.