Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Changing Seasons

The days are getting shorter. Time to look back and reveiw the waning season.

Recent fitness test results... normalized FTP power- UP. Cool! 30-sec, 1- and 5-min maximal efforts almost identical to last year. Bummer. If you're familiar with a mean maximal curve; mine is pretty hilarious. It's just about flat! It's no wonder I'm not happy with my climbing ability. Should I become a track racer? NO! Am I a genetic freak devoid of the ability to sprint? Perhaps. More likely, the fault lies in my training.

Last year built a solid base. I neglected to include enough over-reaching efforts in my training. My training philosophy is evolving too. OUT- for this year are long multi-week periods of exclusively base miles. IN- base miles integrated with more above-threshold efforts. My sub-treshold work is to maintain more than develop.

I'm super excited about he upcoming year. I'm developing a cohesive training philosophy for myself. I started out blindly following Joe Friels' Mountain Bike Training Bible. While an excellent guide, I found some things simply do not work FOR ME. That's the trick to this whole training thing - find what works FOR YOU.

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