Learning To Let Go

The midwest is a bitter cold place right now. Last night when I went downstairs to the pain cave the outside temp was 4 degrees. I opened Trainerroad and found Kaiser was my poison for the night. I always struggle with VO2 work early in the season. It doesn’t seem to matter if I’ve taken time off of the bike or not, VO2 stuff just kills me until deeper into the training cycle. After setting everything up I hopped on the bike and started the workout. Music was playing and a superprestige CX race was on the TV. Mid warm-up I knew things weren’t going to be good. I was struggling with the openers and they were only 60 second jobbers. Well, I decided to push onward and give it a try, after all, training your body to push the limit doesn’t always feel great. Well, what happened in that first interval was nothing short of a spectacular failure.

Since I did not have the capacity to do VO2 stuff tonight I thought switching days may work out. Thursday’s ride was 4 x 10min. threshold intervals, surely I could do that and put the VO2 stuff off until then. Well, that didn’t work either. I’m not sure I made it 3 full minutes at ftp. A little disappointed, I figured my body was trying to tell me it needed a break. After about 10 minutes of pedaling at ~50% ftp I called it a night. I’ve always struggled with deciphering what my body is trying to tell me through workout results. Do I need rest? Do I need to toughen up mentally and push through this? Is this a particular area of weakness that needs work? Well, last night there was little doubt. I needed rest. My TSS has not been very high lately, but it seems that I always struggle the last work week of SSB II. Maybe I need to plan in an additional week or a couple days of recovery for the early season ramp up.

Back to the cold. I woke up this morning to -22 degrees and a windchill of -49. It was pretty apparent that we would close the office today. Who needs their pool or spa serviced when it’s -22? Since there was a whole day to “kill” I figured I’d eat a good breakfast and hit the trainer. After some oatmeal with fruit and a muffin I headed once again to the pain cave. Should I do a recovery ride and hope to make up for my failure in a couple of days? Do I go back and try Kaiser again? I settled on trying to ease into VO2 stuff again. Rather than 2 minutes at 120% I found one with 90 second ints and set it down to 115%. To my great surprise I nailed it! Now, I did not quite end up at 120%, but I did exceed the 115% on all of the work intervals. Maybe I need to work up to the VO2 stuff a little more gradually than Chad has laid out in the plans.

Next week is a recovery week, then I have a 1 week gap before I start the general build phase. That looks like as good a place as any to put in a few VO2 workouts to see if I can persuade my body that it CAN handle this stuff. Letting go of failed workouts is tough for me. They don’t happen often. I need to pay a little closer attention to them and see if there is a particular type or time frame that the failures occur in. Today’s workout was a good psychological boost for me. Just knowing that I can do the work sets me up for the last couple of workouts before an apparently much needed break.

#maxxistires #gotailwind #trainerroad

Pre-season planning

At the end of last season I began looking around for another 100 mile race to do this year. Lumberjack is great, but I wanted to see new places and try new races! Well, this past Saturday registration opened for LJ100, and all the other guys were planning a trip, so I grabbed a spot before it sold out in less than an hour.

Since I’ve had to cat up and I won’t be a contender in our state race series this year I may as well pour it all in to LJ and BT Epic. I’m treating them as my “A” races this season. With a four month gap between them I think that will lend itself well to the training demands I’ll have for each race. Right now, it’s the second week of January and I’ve completed Sweet Spot Base 1 and started Sweet Spot Base 2 earlier this week.

I’m hoping for a good showing in the race series as far as my age group, but since this is my first season racing with the “big boys” we’ll see how that goes.

2019 Upgrades!

On the second day of the new year I logged in to USA cyclings web page and began the license renewal process. As I filled in the blanks I came down to the list of disciplines and my category status for each discipline. As I selected the upgrade option for xc racing I thought “this is getting real”. I proceeded to fill out the request by filling in my race resume and reason for the upgrade. In the past I’ve filled the form out for cx upgrades, and even to go from 3 to 2 in cross country. Usually you submit the form and they e-mail you back in a couple of days to notify you if it was accepted. Not today. No sooner than I had filled out the form and refreshed the page it said in terrible black letters that I was now a cat 1 cross country racer. It was as though USAC was saying ” if you’re dumb enough to ask for this, it’s yours. Here you go”.

Our race series calendar was just released a day or two ago, so the calendar is set. I’ve already started my base training phase on Trainerroad. Now it’s time to put my nose to the grindstone. I have no expectations of winning anything at all, but I’m determined to not bring up the rear either.

My 2019 goals are few, but they are set.

1. Sub 5 at BT Epic! (no missed turns this year)

2. Get to mid-pack in cat 1 races.

3. Set a pr @ lumberjack.