Getting back in shape

After a long summer of cleaning fish and not a lot of play, these last few weeks I've been getting my tail end back into gear.
Fish camp is hard hard work, but it's a different kind of work that drains you from the inside out with long hours and a never ending chores.
Now that's over, but the muscles that have benefited from all that work don't do a whole lot for biking, or soon enough skiing.
It;s hard to shake the base, but while I worked the many little muscles that one doesn't think about have lost their edge, and I can feel it.
I can still for example, go do a 40 mile ride in the mountains, the base is still there to support it, but ouch, don't ask me about my shoulders or my sit-bones after a ride like that.
Ontop of that, a ride like that isn't too bad by itself, but to try and ride everyday, 5 days a week plus a cross training run one day, starts tapping into reserves that my body isn't used to storing.
It's a tough gig and it can be more than a little deflating of a feeling when a 1/3 of the way up a climb I'm already at the bottom end of my gears.
It's tough as well because just 3.5 months ago I was in strong condition, able to pedal for hours or spend my days climbing up and down mountains like it was all I was ever made for.
I remember that, it wasn't long ago, but three months is a long time for the body.
This is especially relevant since I've been working so hard in a different way.
As a result, my body has adjusted to keep.
For the last two months for example, when the work did stop, my body knew to chill out and take any rest it could get.
Doing a run might have been good to keep my cardio up, but it also would burn calories that I might need later.
Now, after I've put in a few consecutive work outs I feel like I better lay low.
Part of this is also related to the way I've been storing energy. Over the summer I'm working all the time, but I've rarely got the throttle to the floor for more than a short while. It's more just a constant.
Now however I spend most of my day in idle, except for a few hours of the day at which point the pedal is theoretically on the floor to darn close.
As a result I notice that I tire out a lot sooner on my after work rides much more quickly than I would have last spring.
Then there's the psychological. Like I said, it sucks to feel like you're making up for slacking off and that I'm not strong enough to enjoy the rides I want to do.
On top of that is the nearing winter.
Who knows for sure when we'll get snow on the ground this year, and while the weather is really great right now, riding season is fast coming to an end.
To a certain extent it would almost make more sense to just start doing dryland training for skiing, but I hate that.
So I'll ride, and just try and get all the systems back online, and come October, I'll start snowdancing, aka, dryland training.