Well, it has been a few weeks between blog updates. Mainly because I really have not had a heck of a lot of interesting news. I have been working a lot, hanging out with family and keeping up my training during the opportunities that pop up.
To start, I missed the Around the Bay 30k road race. When a race forces me to sign up extra early, I often forget the dates so many weeks ago, when my wife mentioned that she had a work related getaway, the weekend she stated didn't seem too important. The week before the race we discussed our upcoming plans and realized we had a conflict. I am not too SMRT.
As I was no longer going to run that race, I decided it was time to get serious about the bike. Since I was running so much during training (in order to break 2 hours at ATB), I was afraid I was going to be very far behind last year in terms of bike fitness. Thankfully, the speed is still there but I really have to work on maintaining the effort on the medium (40k to 60k) distances. Thanks to the great weather we have had in the Mississauga area, I have been able to abandon the trainer and experience the preferred resistance of the roads.
This is key for me as I never quite trust the resistance settings on the trainer or life cycles at the gym. Until you add the wind and hills, it just seems to be too much of a guessing game. In the past week the wind has really picked up and added some extra leg zapping gusts. In previous years, I would have been upset, thinking the wind was ruining my ride. Now, I have learned to use this element to push hard and battle to add even more blocks to my bike fitness.
Yesterday, for example, I wanted to gets some hill work in on the bike but only had a small window of time to ride. As the wind was blowing up a storm from the west, I decided to grind it out with a massive effort towards Milton. This 20k stretch is very flat but with the force of the wind I could use this road close to my home to work on some tough resistance training. I knew the ride back would be a piece of cake so I put in a very big push for the entire first half and my legs were cooking by the time I reached the halfway mark.
I then took a quick water break and then turned around with the aid of the wind. I did not totally relax. I am always trying to see just how fast the wind can take me so I hamered a solid ride home as well. Too add some extra miles, I zoomed around the Erin Mills portion of town and ended up with a nice 50k tester before heading home for supper.
With the triathlon season less than two month away, I really need to sit down and hammer out a strong plan as I have been free training on top of my run program I was working on. I know the basics of the plan but I need to get organized and stick to it, although, the flexible approach right now is not too bad as there have been gains and I am not lacking the effort in my sessions. The biggest component would be to add some more rest, if anything.
In an attempt to become more of a morning person...
If anyone is interested in an early Monday morning (say 6:00am) track session or short ride, please let me know. I need the motivation of another person to make sure I get out of bed. Right now, Monday (up until race season) is my best day as I do not have to get the kids ready for day care. If it is another day of the week, I would have to make sure to be home by 7:00am (sorry for the boring details).
Talk soon,
Larry
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