Two Wheel Blogs

I made something of a decision yesterday. I took a slight change in direction with my cycling. I realized that up until now I'd been really focused in on building up my ability to ride a fast tempo for a longer and longer time.

I'd gotten pretty good at it too. My typical ride, when I had time for it, would be 2+ hours in length. If I happened to have done that ride on the road, and therefore had power data, I'd accumulate TSS in the 200 range.

Now, if you're training up to do something like the Ouachita Challenge, piling lots of tempo and threshold into your weekly plan is a good idea. I had to ask myself, if I'm not working up to another Ouachita Challenge then why am I training that way?

So then, what am I training for?

Event-wise, I don't have a lot on the calendar. I had a few things in mind but it's starting to look like I'll have a big block of de-training coming up. A couple of extended business trips are on the horizon. My airport muscles will be finding really good form by mid summer.

So, with no events to motivate me and the prospect of living the business travel lifestyle ahead, I think it's probably better for me to focus on maximizing both training benefit and fun factor in my riding for a while.

My rides will for the most part be much shorter now. The kind of short, intense workouts that hurt so good. An hour of lung busting intensity is enough to keep me feeling human.

I put the new plan into action yesterday. An hour on the trail was all it took to really cook the legs. I found that one of the 15 minute loops I'd do as part of my Ouachita Challenge training only takes me about 10-11 minutes if I really turn and burn it. Realistically though, they're more like 12-minute laps because after each one I have to stop and let my heart rate come down out of the stratosphere.

I'm planning to do much the same today. This time on the road. It should be interesting to see what kind of power I can put out in a one-hour effort. I'm not banking on stellar results. After all, I've only been training for this kind of work for one day.