Monday, January 19, 2009

Reprieve, Verification & Vindication


Well, we here on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains have gotten a reprieve from winter. It's mid January and it is 55F during the day which means that I can get in a ride on the road. This leads me to the verification that I am definately in the base building stage of training and am not anywhere close to where I will need to be in 3 months.


My road ride on Sunday on the cyclocross bike was fantastic but I had to stop and pull the toe caps off of my shoes and remove my arm warmers because I was over heated. The ride that I did would normally take about 1hr 45 min during the regular season took me right at 2 hrs to do. Granted I wasn't trying to break any records but I was 'getting after it'.

I really felt great which means leads me to the vindication that I am, in fact, building strength and endurance and that my body is finally adapting to the training stresses that I'm placing on it. Training inside is one thing but getting onto the bike outside where I can accurately compare times from one work out to another is key and not always do-able in the middle of January.


It looks like I've got about 11 weeks until the 12 hrs of Gallup NM... I've got a lot of long hours in the saddle if I'm going to survive that race.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice write up on your day of riding. It warmed up to 10 above yesterday. This morning it was 9 below on our deck. My recent rides have been on the trainer with the only excitement being which texture particle on the painted drywall looks like a fluffy rabbit or the starship Enterprise.

Needless to say, I am envious of your 55 degrees and clear roads.

Congrats on your decision to race the Breck Epic.

Mike

Unknown said...

Im sorry to hear you had to pull your arm and toe warmers off to prevent overheating... man that sucks.

I have frost bite on the inside of my nostrils...