I've been diligent with my training logs for the past couple of seasons. Now at the end of the 2009 season, I almost forget that I followed a plan. For 2009, the general idea was to ride as much as I could stand to through the early season and try to peak in early July. I focused on longer intervals, 5-20 minutes, almost exclusively and tried to ride hard tempo when I wasn't doing an interval. In prior years, I did lots of short intervals ~1 minute, and sprinting with lots of easy tempo in between.
Now, I'm looking back on 2009 to figure out what to do for next year.
I'm surprised that my highest volume training month was March 2009: 37+ hours. Lots of group rides and not many races. There is a whole lot of complaining in my log. I started to develop joint and tendon aches and pains, so I backed off from there.
I thought racing would be a substitute for the shorter intervals and sprint training that I did in prior seasons. I was wrong. The problem was most of the racing I did was at Westlake in the "A" field, and I'm too slow to compete, so I was generally just wheel sucking in the early season and rarely attacked. My sprint faded and my anaerobic power dropped off through the year. In cat 4 races, I ended up watching my peers jump into breaks and hoping other people would close the gaps instead of being a main protagonist in the race. That sucked.
A good point: I peaked when I thought I would. My best effort of the season was the TOTV prologue. My HR was pegged the whole time at 182. I didn't even think I could do that. My TT knowledge and ability improved through June and July.
After the peak, I crumbled. I tried pretty hard to reverse the trend with more hours in August, but at that point, I was cooked mentally and physically and didn't really reverse it until the CX season and when I hit the weight room.
My training and racing mix will be significantly different in 2010. The broad brush strokes are less racing, but more group rides. Make the group rides difficult and race-like. Plan to peak for Tour of the Valley. Take a long break in July or August, then rebuild for CX season.
1 comment:
Since I don't race as much anymore I usually wind up organizing something on most weekends with lots of different starting points. You are always welcome to join us and we'll even let you pull us around the various counties!
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