Two Wheel Blogs

Yesterday was the first day of strength training. The line-up didn't look too hard or leave me with the impression that I wouldn't be able to fully complete the workout. I did my warm-up, began my exercises, and started thinking "maybe I haven't lost that much fitness???" That is until the "lunges" surfaces two-thirds of the way through the exercises.

Lunges seem fairly straight-forward. Stride forward bending at the knee until your back knee touches the ground. 20 reps on each leg, rest 90 seconds, and repeat another 20 reps per leg. Let's just say, I completed them and wasn't feeling too badly. Taxed, but not shaking. Keep in mind, the lunges were already on top of individual leg presses. After an arm-focused exercise, "box jumps" were up in the rotation. Squat with knees bent, thighs parallel to the floor, jump up onto box and land in squatted position. Jump down and repeat 20 times.

I set-up the plyo box and planned my attack to do 20 jumps, rest 90 seconds, and complete the other 20 jumps. By jump 5, my legs were quivering so badly I could barely stand. I did jump 6 and almost fell over. Legs were toast. Shaking, wet noodles resembling some form of a semi-muscular, viscous mess. The calf raises were out of the question.

Humbly I put my cycling shoes on and lifted a leg over the trainer and soft pedaled for 25 minutes. It actually felt good to turn the pedals. I recall thinking at least my legs know how to respond to this and it feels natural. Today, my thighs are heavy and sore, but not overly so. I'm going to spin again tonight and stretch again.

Keep in mind, this is the type of workout I want to do. I want to come away beaten down and completely exhausted to the point that I can barely stand. Then I want to recover, rebuild, and attack them again with new found fury. My goal is to get my body so used to these efforts that it feels as though a 40km TT or a 1-hour CX isn't over the top. It feels good and it's temporary.