Base building continued

Well, it's been a busy week, I've got tasks on the go all the time, from lunch hour workouts, to Monday and Wednesday evening Spanish classes, to training, errands and projects on the other nights.

Seems that a schedule that works well now is Saturday and Sunday bigger days, Monday off, Tuesday-Thursday doing lunch and evening workouts, and Friday rest for the weekend. It seems about 12 hours/week has been a sustainable average for me, but honelstly at this time of year I don't mind cutting that back since trainer workouts are so efficient - no coasting and such, just nice constant load. I guess that means there's no power spikes and other random challenges either, but that's fine right now. Q1 for me is already including lots of weekends gobbled up: New York work trip, Revelstoke Cat Ski trip, Victoria work trip, Fernie ski weekend will all cut into training a bit. On the positive side, 9 days in Tucson and a weekend in Victoria will help. Haven't really looked at Q2 yet, other than one 5 day stint in Phoenix for riding.

I've entered my last two race seasons in fairly different form. Two years ago I entered the year very light (150-155lbs) and very aerobically fit. I climbed great on sustained climbs, but those are few and far between in Alberta, and don't feature prominently into our racing circuit. As expected, I got blasted on the flat hammer rides, rollers, etc. as I had proportionately less leg strength and absolute power. Last year I didn't watch weight nearly as much (160-165lbs, I like that weight), and did a power training program riding much of the winter. Let me clarify that as
saying I did training focused on building upper threshold power in early season. Interesting, yes, but in retrospect, wrong time of year. It was prescribed as a winter training plan. I'll just leave it at that. I neglected in some ways my aerobic base, but my desire to "ride lots" overcame some of that come springtime so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

So my plan this year is to buff up (160-165 range (I'm 166 now) I can hit again for sure without comprimising power). I'm doing lots of pure aerobic work now, with leg strength as well. Been doing mostly 1 hour blocks midweek at lunch, couple evenings I can do 90 min to 120 min if all works out, and weekends I go longer. But instead of incorporating any power (power is speedxstrength), I'm keeping leg speed down and doing strength (on and off bike). For example yesterday I did a workout for 45 minutes (plus warmup/cooldown) where I was 50-70 rpm and pushing pretty hard the whole time, lots o-torque, but keeping my HR around 140-145. I think it's promising... and if not, at least it feels good.

Good riders push big gears fast for long periods of time. One year I couldn't push big gears, one year I couldn't push them long enough. I'm not worried about losing leg speed capability, I've got an acceptably smooth pedal stroke (PowerCranks help), and can ride without bouncing at pretty high cadence. I actually think 50-70rpm improves your stroke better than most people give credit for, because it really helps you use all the muscles around the pedal stroke, you can't skip portions.

We'll see how it's going in a month or so, I feel good now.