Always Second Guessing
I guess it's the nature of the beast but I find that not a day goes by and I don't ask myself if I could be doing something better or more efficiently on the bike. This is almost entirely due to my spending far too much time on the message boards. Yesterday I read about a guy who never rides more than 3-4 hours in training to get ready for his 100 mile mountain bike races. This is good since I don't have a whole hell of a lot of time to ride. But then every time I push myself out past 4 hours I start to fall apart. Is this because my pacing is bad? Is this the nature of the beast, that these aches and pains are something I need to get used to? Is my nutrition still off? Am I still too new to this game? What of doughnuts?
Yeah that's how I generally waste my free time in between scurrying to get things done at work. Yesterday was nice because I finished a job that had been haunting me for 2 days. So it gave me half a day of free-ish time to read a little. I then end up filling myself with doubt about every possible thing I can. Screw it though, for now I'm sticking to my build for the next 2.5 weeks.
I may add the Marysville Marathon to the race plan, which is a 6 hour enduro on the last weekend in June. It's out near Harrisburg on some farm and is supposed to be a great course. It will come at the end of my rest week so that might work out well.
If I do, I will have 2 of the MASS enduro events in the belt clip and would need only 3 more to qualify for the overall MASS endurance series standings. So choices to make there. I would have to register for the series before the second event since you only get 1 retroactive to add to the standings. That would also mean I would have to squeeze in 3 more which could really pack the schedule with a potential total of 10 races/events this year. That really sounds like too many. Assuming I stick this biking thing out, I need to plan better next year.
Today was threshold work on the bike which is not my favorite way to spend my free time. The thing about threshold work is not that it hurts, but that it hurts for a long time. These intervals are not 2-5 minutes. These bitches are 10, 15, 20, or even 30-60 minutes long. The upside to this work is high but mentally tough to start. Funny thing is that once you start it's really not that bad. Sorta like hills I guess.
When I woke up today it was 46 degrees out which really stumped me. I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter considering what to do. After 10 minutes I decided to bring the fan into the basement and get on the trainer. After 2 minutes of that I decided I just didn't have it today. So I got off, stood around in the basement for a few minutes, got dressed, and went out and did a swamp short loop time trial:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2951927
Good pace for such a short ride. It's really hard to get much faster on a 45 minute ride when more than 20% of it is your warm up. I did the loop in reverse which I think is a bit slower. Not a ton of volume but then it's 45 minutes of real quality work which was the point of today's ride anyway. Not too worried about my meager 3:15 saddle time on the week since Saturday should be a good 6 hours of saddle time then whatever I can muster Sunday. Still undecided if I should do recovery tomorrow or sleep in.
Yeah that's how I generally waste my free time in between scurrying to get things done at work. Yesterday was nice because I finished a job that had been haunting me for 2 days. So it gave me half a day of free-ish time to read a little. I then end up filling myself with doubt about every possible thing I can. Screw it though, for now I'm sticking to my build for the next 2.5 weeks.
I may add the Marysville Marathon to the race plan, which is a 6 hour enduro on the last weekend in June. It's out near Harrisburg on some farm and is supposed to be a great course. It will come at the end of my rest week so that might work out well.
If I do, I will have 2 of the MASS enduro events in the belt clip and would need only 3 more to qualify for the overall MASS endurance series standings. So choices to make there. I would have to register for the series before the second event since you only get 1 retroactive to add to the standings. That would also mean I would have to squeeze in 3 more which could really pack the schedule with a potential total of 10 races/events this year. That really sounds like too many. Assuming I stick this biking thing out, I need to plan better next year.
Today was threshold work on the bike which is not my favorite way to spend my free time. The thing about threshold work is not that it hurts, but that it hurts for a long time. These intervals are not 2-5 minutes. These bitches are 10, 15, 20, or even 30-60 minutes long. The upside to this work is high but mentally tough to start. Funny thing is that once you start it's really not that bad. Sorta like hills I guess.
When I woke up today it was 46 degrees out which really stumped me. I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter considering what to do. After 10 minutes I decided to bring the fan into the basement and get on the trainer. After 2 minutes of that I decided I just didn't have it today. So I got off, stood around in the basement for a few minutes, got dressed, and went out and did a swamp short loop time trial:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2951927
Good pace for such a short ride. It's really hard to get much faster on a 45 minute ride when more than 20% of it is your warm up. I did the loop in reverse which I think is a bit slower. Not a ton of volume but then it's 45 minutes of real quality work which was the point of today's ride anyway. Not too worried about my meager 3:15 saddle time on the week since Saturday should be a good 6 hours of saddle time then whatever I can muster Sunday. Still undecided if I should do recovery tomorrow or sleep in.
Labels: mountain bike, threshold, time trail
2 Comments:
At 9:22 AM,
Unknown said…
Norm, when you say something like "for now I'm sticking to my build for the next 2.5 weeks" - what is meant by the word "build"?
Also, do you know a good recipe for your own sports drink? Something like a Gatorade I can make myself?
At 10:36 AM,
Norm said…
A build is basically a cycle of training. You build for 4 weeks (or 3 or 5), then take a rest week. So in this cycle you don't really care about performance so much you just hammer away, increasing intensity every week. Your body is supposed to be getting stronger but you're generally tired so you don't see it so much. The rest week allows you to catch up and see the gains. Then you start another build, or a peak, taper, whatever.
There are homemade recipes for Gatorade online but I don't know that it's worth it. I've tried a few things and finally bit the bullet and just pay for it (Hammer Nutrition stuff) because it never tastes good when I make it. Some of them use kool-aid packs and basically just sugar and salt. But powdered Gatorade is pretty cheap so I'm not sure it really pays to do it yourself on that.
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