E1 (Active Recovery)

I mannaged to get out of bed at 6:15 AM, which I felt fairly good about, until I remembered that Andrea had already been up for and hour and a half. I got downstairs about 5 minutes after Andrea had completed her ride and it took about 10 minutes to switch bikes on the trainer so I could start my ride. At about 6:30 I was on the bike and slowly spinning away. The 1 hour ride went by surprisingly fast and the kids caused very little problems while they were getting read for school. There were a couple of NERF darts that flew by me coming from upstairs but no other excitement. As far as the ride go everything went fairly well. I am still fighting off a cold, but it seams to be getting better and the congestion is starting to loosen up. I debated whether or not I should be training with the cold, but at the low intensities at this point in the year I don't think it will hurt much.

Ride Summary
Ride Duration:
Total Distance: miles
Average Speed: mph
Average Power: watts
Average Heart Rate: bpm

E2 Endurance Ride

Tonights ride went really well. The legs felt rested and strong and I was able to maintain 18 mph with ease. I was pushing a fairly large gear 42x12 at a cadence of around 70. My aveage heart rate was hovering around 150 bpm for the majority of the ride and started to climb a little after 1 hour. I will follow up with a short 1 hour recovery ride next morning.

Ride Summary
Ride Duration: 1:31:32
Total Distance: ##.# miles
Average Speed: 17.7 mph
Average Power: ### watts
Average Heart Rate: 147 bpm

E1 (Active Recovery)

As usual I was a little sluggish getting up this morning, but I actually felt good about doing it. This mornings ride was just to get the legs spinning and remove any lactic acid that might have acculated during the fairly easy E2 ride the night before. The legs felt a little stiff starting out, but once they warmed up everything felt fine. I keep the speed average around 14 mph which made for a fairly low HR in the low 120s.

Ride Summary
Ride Duration:
Total Distance: miles
Average Speed: mph
Average Power: watts
Average Heart Rate: bpm

E2 Endurance Ride (First 08 Traing Ride)

Tonight ride was standary plain E2 endurance ride. Nothing fancy or difficult, just time on the bike to start building a base for latter.

Ride Summary
Ride Duration:
Total Distance: miles
Average Speed: mph
Average Power: watts
Average Heart Rate: bpm

Training Changes for the 2008 Season

I have made a few changes to my training schedule for this year. The changes are aimed at allowing more recovery time between training efforts. For example, my Tuesday rides will be on Monday night followed by a recovery/maintainance ride the next morning. The next ride of significance is then Thursday night which is followed by a recovery ride the following morning.

Endurance Rides
The plan is to start out fairly easy during the first part of the training especially in the Prep phase. The heart rate range, for E2 is from 142-160 but early on I will try to keep it below 150. As I progress into the later Base phases I will push it closer to 160 to keep building the endurance. When I start performing intervals the E2 rides in the middle of the week will be primarily for mainance and therefore at a lower HR ave. The long rides on the weekend will also build in intensity until closer to the race season.

Intervals
The focus this year is to go into the intervals well rested to get the maximum benefit from the training time. Last year I pushed to hard on the endurance rides which left me tired and unmotivated to perform the intervals. There were some days that went fairly well but they were few and in general there was little consistancy. I often was only able to complete the first 2 or 3 intervals before my power output dropped significantly. I feel confident that with proper rest I will make strong gains to my LT threshold. I order to track my progress I will be conducting periodic time trials both on the road and on the trainer.

Schedule
Monday morning: Lift weights
Monday night: Endurance Ride
Tuesday morning: Recovery Ride
Thursday morning: Lift weights
Thursday night: Endurance Ride/Intervals
Friday morning: Recovery Ride
Saturday Afternoon: Endurance Ride/Intervals
Sunday Afternoon: Endurance Ride

Training time of year?

Well, I gave myself a little more time off this year than last to guard against burn out, but it is now time to get back to training. This week marks the first of two weeks in the prep phase before base 1. The weekly plan is no different than the transition phase, but what is different is the focus on consistancy. That being said, I will do my best to back it down when I am feeling tired to avoid getting sick. It seamed like last year I was always run down and I can count at least 3 colds during the race season, not to mention pneamonia to finish off the season.

I will try my best to write about each ride in a separate entry, more for myself to keep things organized. I also hope that others will find this benificial as well. In the next couple of days I plan to put together a concrete list of goals for the upcomming 2008 race season, including a few interim goals along the way to keep myself on track. One primary goal will be to increase my power at threshold. There are others, but I will leave that for another post.

I am looking forward to 2008. I know a few comp riders that are making the move up to expert and I think we will feed off of each others abilities. I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and hope your training is going well.