New Mexico Took Something. Washington Gave It Back.

Week of May 12–17, 2026 | TSS: 616 | Hours: 8:20

Monday I flew to New Mexico with a carry-on, a pair of bike shoes stuffed into the side pocket, and zero intention of being disciplined about food or sleep.

That's not a confession. That's the whole point.

There's a version of the endurance athlete who travels with a cooler and a food scale and gets up at 5am to hit macros before anyone else is awake. I have been that person. I do not think that person is wrong. I also do not think that person is always right.

This week called for something else.

Two birthday celebrations. New Mexican food done the right way — green chile on everything, margaritas that taste like someone actually squeezed the limes, meals that go long because the people around the table are worth lingering over. I was present for it. Not logging it, not calculating the offset, not halfway somewhere else in my head running training math.

Just there.

The rides still happened. Three days of work at altitude, HR running 10–15 beats hotter than sea level for the same effort — which is expected, and which is also its own kind of quiet suffering that nobody warns you about when they say "altitude training is great for you." It is great for you. It also feels like someone put a hand over your mouth while you're trying to breathe. You adapt. You keep pedaling.

HRV told the story the data always tells eventually. Early in the prior week I'd been grinding into fatigue — readings in the single digits, the kind of numbers that are the body's version of a check engine light. By the time I hit the rest days mid-trip, it was climbing back. By Friday it was sitting at 28.

Then Back Home.

Flew home to Seattle gray. That particular overcast that isn't dramatic, isn't stormy — it's just the sky shrugging. Cool, damp, quiet. I got home, unpacked, and went out on the bike anyway.

Three hours and nine minutes. 266 TSS. The biggest single session I've logged this year, and it came at the end of a week that included red and green chile, birthday celebrations , and a flight back home.

HRV the morning of that ride: 36. Highest it's been in the dataset.

The body had processed the week. The altitude work was sitting in the tissue. The rest was actual rest, not the anxious kind where you're staring at your phone wondering if you're losing fitness. The margaritas were fine. The fitness was there.

I think about this a lot — the gap between what the spreadsheet wants and what a life actually looks like. The spreadsheet wants consistent load, controlled variables, no deviations. A life that's worth having wants birthday dinners and trips to see people you care about and food that's tied to place and memory.

The good news, which this week confirmed again: those things are not opposites. You don't have to choose between being a serious athlete and being a present human. You have to be honest about which one you're doing at any given moment, and trust that the body keeps the ledger.

Mine came out ahead this week.

Week total: 616 TSS / 8:20 hours. Previous week was 341. The NM block and the recovery that followed it built something.

23 weeks to Tri-Cities. The base is there. The life is there.

Both of those things can be true at once.