Spring is here, – well actually not reallly, this was taken from this time last year.
Since the worst of the weather, in the middle of January, I’ve been training quite hard. In February I completed about 850 miles. I have also started training at race intensity. Last year, I didn’t start until March or April. But, this year, I was getting bored of just doing long miles so I started doing what I like best, which is training hard, especially riding up hills.
This week’s Training
- Sat 80 miles – mostly steady averaging 18mph pushing hard on two climbs around Vale of White horse, and Lambourne
- Sun – 45 minutes on turbo to help legs recover after Saturday’s hard ride.
- Mon – no cycling
- Tues – 70 miles around Chilterns, averaging about 19mph – Bledlow Ridge, Stokenchurch. There’s about 7 long climbs on this ride, I’m basically zigzagging up and down Bledlow Ridge. The climbs are often quite long up to 2 or 3 miles and not too steep. It was a great ride, with some of the best weather this year. Also, some of these very quiet country lanes were completely deserted in the middle of the day. You were as likely to come across a dog walker as a car. Cycling heaven! It was the first time, I felt really fit.
- Wed – 25 miles averaging 15.5. My legs were really tired from the previous day, so I just plodded around a local chaingang circuit, barely managing to average 16mph
- Thurs- Planning to do about 40-50 miles fairly fast, but no intervals
- Friday – Rest
- Sat – 30 miles steady
- Sun – 25 mile Race.
The previous week, I had a few rides were I just felt really slow, I had set an ambitious plan, but, I didn’t have the legs. Sometimes, I feel quite slow, but, other times I felt really good. Especially, at this time of the year, I don’t worry about this kind of inconsistency. In fact it is good to have alternating sessions. Hard, recovery, hard, recovery e.t.c.
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That sounds pretty good from my memorry of doing such things. Im approaching 1 year now after getting back on the bike after 20 years away from the sport. I’m 49 now so riding is a bit tougher than it was in my 20′s. I managed 100k yester day at 16mph in the hills and I am hoping to get up to race pace buy about may. What would yousay I need to do to race at 3rd cat level in the UK (apart from that is get some points at 4th cat level!)