Pat

How not to prepare for a crit...

The greatest benefit of having a Power Meter is being able to workout at a prescribed intensity for a specific amount of time. There is no subjective, wishy-washy, this feels about right. You can look down and see exactly how hard you are working at any given moment. It's great. And if there's a recurring theme from coaches it's that most people go too easy on hard days and too hard on easy days. So why when I looked down at my Power Tap on Thursday and saw I was going way too hard didn't I ease off? It was a beautiful day, I was riding outdoors, and I hooked up with another local rider, and you know the rest. What should have been a Zone 2 ride became a “don't mind me, I always wheeze like this when I ride” kind of ride. Then Friday I did my intervals as planned. So by the time the crit started on Saturday any snap that I once had was throughly driven from my legs.

The race was fun none the less. The wind was out of the south at 21mph gusting to 25mph. I started in the back and worked on moving forward for three laps till I was about half way up the pack. I was really pushing myself to move forward so I figured I'd sit in for a couple of laps and recover. I checked to see how big the pack was behind me and found out I was the tail end. Apparently, those people I had worked so hard to pass had either passed me back or fallen off the back. Two laps later it was my turn to get dropped, as we came around a 90 degree turn straight into the wind I lost the wheel in front of me and that was it. A few of us worked together to get to the end but I never saw the lead group again.

The good news is, I learned a lot about how hard I can actually push if I need to to stay with the pack. I also got a lot of great data which will help me with pacing in the future.

This week I'll be doing some testing on the Time Trial bike this to figure out where my Functional Threshold is and where I need to get to over the next 74 days.

Train Hard and Smart

Pat

Some times it's harder not to train.

I'm not talking about taking it easy to recover from a workout, or letting your body heal after an injury. I'm healthy, recovered and have a brand new set of wheels, Power Tap and all, sitting at home.

Let me back up for a minute. I received my new Power Tap wheels from WheelBuilder.com last Thursday. After putting the girls to bed that night I had just enough time to mount some tires and drool over them before leaving on a trip the next morning. I'm an airline pilot and it is without a doubt the best job in the world, at least for me. But the downside is, I'm away from home, and my bike, for several days at a time.

So here I sit, 2000+ miles from my bike, trying to move forward on my training for the Utah State Time Trials in 86days. When all I really want to do is go ride on my new wheels.

In an effort to make my time on the road productive, I've been plugging my weekly workouts into the off days of my schedule and trying to figure out how this will all work. In essence I have four workouts I want to accomplish on a weekly basis.

1. Threshold Intervals- Done at 100% of Functional Threshold for 20min (2x20 or 3x20 as the race gets closer)

2. Supra Threshold Intervals- 105%-107% of FT for 5 to 9 minutes (5x5@107% or 4x9@105%)

3. Z2 Long Ride- On the Road Bike hopefully outdoors 2 to 3 hours, below 80% FT

4. Training Crit- 30min local crit on Road bike.

I have enough time before the Time Trial to get in two 4-week cycles before my training gets race specific. The local training crits will solely be for training, trying to get some hard efforts into my legs and having some fun.

That's about it, all I have to do is plug the workouts and testing into my days off, make sure I can recover between efforts, and get the power progression right and I should be set. And save some time for my wife and the twins...and my in-laws are coming to town for a week...and...oh yeah, I need to start running and swimming again next week.

But more on that later (think sharks)

Train Hard and Smart,

Pat