Monday, January 16, 2012

It's Supposed to be Tiring

The beginning of a season is all about restarting the engine. Training is like a drug. Consistant dosage turns into tolerance. Only tolerance and resulting dosage increase is a good thing. Overdose is bad of course. I've done nothing special for recovery. No massage, no foam rolling, no Biofreeze. I'm accumulating enough fatigue that it's time to start paying attention to recovery.

Not recovering adequately makes for tired legs. My hamstrings are tight. My glutes sore. The ride mission today... go easy. Just enough to recover. Stay in Zone 1. At first I'm struggling to keep the cadence above 70. Tight hamstrings has the form... bad. It takes a good 30-minutes before things get better.

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Things get a lot better. The legs loosen up. The glutes stop burning. The form gets better. The cadence comes up. I keep the power low. This is just an easy reocvery ride. Nice and easy. But still fun.

16/355 - Happy.

And I'm getting due for an easy week. I think I've got one more week left in me if I'm careful.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Grins.

Another day of mild temperatures and clear weather. Ideal for a run around Walnut Creek.

14/366 - Perfect day.

Ever get the feeling you're being watched on the trails? Perhaps you are...

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I saw a fox a few minutes after this. Maybe this doe was being watched, too. We've had some recent rain. This... is a site unseen at WCP in quite some time... I'm not sure I've ever seen a wet spot out there?

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Not long after this I run into two young kids. Me: "Having fun?" Kid 1: "Yeah, I just rode through the creek and got all wet, it was awesome!" After hearing this there was only one thing to do... head for the creek. Was it awesome as advised? YES!

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Now that me and the wife are comingling goods; I need to be a bit more careful about just grabbing stuff...

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For the record, I'm neither sweet nor twisted.

Two hours, forty minutes melt in a flash. All easy paced, but fun working to perfect my trailcraft. January is turning into a dandy!

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Bugged

My rides are growing more meditative. Therapy from a tough couple of days. With a setting like this...

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... one cannot help but feel better. The only problem are the bugs. With warm temperature, no winds the gnats are out in swarms. So thick I can't take my sunglasses off. I set the headlight to jogger-retina-burning setting. Can't breathe through the mouth either. Since the training goal is steady aerobic enduance, breathing through the nose works just fine! I still eat a bunch of bugs.

This rhoadie work is expected this time of year. But the call of the dirt is strong.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

January Perfection

A perfect 74°F day today. Some broken clouds above. But nothing to keep one off the bike...

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Up the road until well after dark. The work isn't intense, but it is steady. A carefully chosen route and laps at a newly de-tree'd Froot Loop help keep the pedals turning with minimal interruption.

5/366 Light Tunnel

Do I look happy?

Happy

Oh Yeah!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

What Month is This?

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Out the door and on the bike immediately after work. I was undressing as I walked in the door. Fantastic weather. Mild temperatures. Mild wind. For January ...I cannot complain about a thing. And things look good through Monday. Two hours of endurance riding, leaving the body and spirits feeling good.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Cooking in the Kitchen


Albino training on the aluminum road to nowhere

A rare site. Me on a trainer. I hate cycling in doors. Rollers are better than a trainer. Usually. But I'm trying to take a more meditative approach to riding the aluminum road to nowhere. Tonight I just wanted to be mindless on the saddle. Mindless and rollers equals a launch across the room. So the stationary trainer is the weapon of choice tonight. Ninety minutes of L2/3 steady state training. Two 5'minute alternating high-cadence spins (15"sec) intervals at random times during the session.

I get off the bike feeling better than whe I started. Mental state as well as physical state. More albino training tomorrow.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Starting 2012 Right.

Week 1 of the 2012 season went well. Time and CTL goals met. Even managed to lose a few pounds ahead of schedule. The riding conditions have been pretty darn good. New Year's Eve ride was absolute perfection as far as weather conditions went. My routing went a bit astray. Luckily my riding partner and wife Jane has cyclocross skills....

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It's all aerobic base mileage at this point. Not hard riding, but deceptively important riding. Seems like every year I cut the base miles short and fall flat when I turn the intensity up. Have I learned my lesson? Let's just say I'm trying out a new cloak of patience in the saddle this year.

In fact, that's the meme for this year. It's a 'clean up' year. Every year I say "this year, I'm going to _________" ...but don't ...even though I know I should. This is the year to actually do those things and work on weaknesses in my conditioning. My typical _______'s include increasing flexibility, core strength conditioning, and ...base miles.

Will I do it? Stay tuned.