Thursday, July 30, 2009

Training Week

It's nice to finally get back to some real training after having a few weeks of taper for races and then a busy work week leaving little time to ride. I like being able to ride as long and as hard as I wanted without having to worry about how I'm going to feel on the weekend to race.



As for the riding I've was intense on the road bike on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday I was at one of my favorite training rides at the PCL Tuesday night Crits. My goal for this week at the Crits was to stay in the pack and be there for the sprint in the end. I succeeded with my goal on both sets. I never really contested for the win but at least I was there to push on the last straight away for the line.



On Wednesday I hit the always fast WNW ride. Again for right now my goal is just to stay with the group and not to get dropped. I did not succeed here. When we got to a section with really steep climbs in it I popped and was out the back to ride the rest of the way alone while watching the pack ride away. What I can't figure out is why can I totally crush it on climbs on a mountain bike on singletrack and run everyone down (including guys on this ride) but when I hit the hills on my road bike I can't keep up. One of these weeks I'm going to make this ride stick and keep with the group. That is the new goal for the season. The only problem is I won't get a whole lot of chances cause I probably won't do it on race weeks.



When I got up this morning the legs were feeling pretty weak so my plan was to take today as a rest day and try to recover a little bit but when my wife suggested that we take the kids to Branched Oak Lake to swim I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get out and ride my mtb on some of my favorite singletrack. I only did a couple of laps and only at a mid-intensity pace. I ran into a few people that are racing an xterra race out there so I talked to them for a little bit about the course.



Not sure what tomorrow is going to bring. Right now it kind of depends on the weather but I will probably get out for something. I need to get my fork fixed on my mountain bike so I might be starting on that instead of riding. Later.



Harp



Harp

3 comments:

Marc Walter said...

One reason is drafting in road racing. Mtn biking you might have more bike handling skills. I've seen a few mtn bike power files. Compared to road power it's less. Less time and less power. When roadies attack a hill it's almost 200-300% of threshold power. Once the break is formed, for the first minutes, it's at least 200% of threshold power up hills to establish the break.

Marc Walter said...

Another thing. Maybe tuesdays efforts are fatiguing you for Wed. Why are you doing 2 hard days in a row? Thats old school.

I would recommend, at the minimum, go hard every other day unless you're training for multi day events that are back to back.

The majority of us are workaholics. That's the mentality of our culture.

Harp said...

I go hard two days in a row cause that is when the rides are that will push me. I am still working on becoming more disciplined to be able to train alone and still go as hard as I would in a fast group ride. I do have this mindset that on my non race weeks I need to go hard every night. These are things I need to continue to work on. Thanks for the info. It helps to understand. Now I need to work on fixing the problem.