Athlete Blogs
June 5th, 2009Blah day
Today was the first day I can remember where it pretty much rained all day, we got some serious rain/flooding going on.Got up early, already planning on an indoor ride. I haven't been on the rollers in weeks, at least that's what it seems. Today was another rest day with a couple of efforts, so easy enough on the rollers.
I have been so used to doing my workouts outside I didn't really know what to expect when I fired up the engines for a 5:00 and several 2:00 efforts. 5:00 at 105% came and went pretty easily and a few 2:00 efforts north of 450w felt good - hard - but good. Holding them for 3 minutes would be like death. Doing a set of 8 like GRIM death. But 2 was fine.
But like most rest days, didn't get much of a buzz out of the workout. Sure, rode for 75 minutes, burned 1000 calories, but nothing exciting. I have to say I'm addicted to the feeling of nailing, or often times exceeding the wattage goals for my rides. As a good friend said the other day, "the SRM is a harsh mistress". That's for damn sure, but I'd have it no other way. So 75% of the time, assuming I'm following a well though out, well planned training program, I'm as happy as can be because I don't have a problem with the workouts. The other 25% of the time I either fail or come close to failing and it makes me super grumpy. Rides like today come somewhere in between since they are not a challenge at all. Enough on that.
I have the opportunity to test a new set of rollers which I'll post my first ride review of shortly. As the reigning KING of indoor training - and by KING I mean the biggest lunatic for riding inside for weeks on end and being happy about it - I will be as honest as I can. We all know and love the e-motion rollers. Everything else, trainers, the "k" rollers, they all pretty much pale in comparison. I'd be more harsh but I don't want to get sued. These new rollers I'm testing show promise.
I was originally planning on doing this TT in south carolina, but in looking at my travel schedule for the next 3 weekends of racing I could not get my head around driving 10 hrs round trip and burning 36 hrs for one race - not with three big weekend of travel coming up. I'd love to do it, just too much work to get there.
On the equipment front, I'm down one bike, the SRM that gave me erroneous numbers at the NJ TT is in CO now for a new battery and check out - so I switched over the properly functioning SRM from my trianing bike to the TT bike. It's 100% now - but I'm out a training bike until I get that SRM back. Been riding the new look 595 for training now, lots of wheel/BB/SRM switching, kind of a pain, but glad I have enough stuff that it will never impact racing or training.
So I'm training hard, focused intervals, the next two days in what looks to be great weather. Plus I get to be home, spend time with family and such. So out the door at first light tomorrow morning, do the hard work, do same again on sunday. I'd have it no other way.
Oh - one other thing, I've been participating in a "coaches roundtable" feature on a very popular mid-atlantic website, gamjams. Basically once/week or so they will post a question to a group of coaches and we all respond, 250 words or less. This week was on threshold training, and why you need to do it if racing is either below or above. Funny actually, but check the responses, you may find them interesting:
http://www.gamjams.net/2009/06/gamjams-coaches-roundtable-threshold-in-training-but-not-during-races.html
You may also notice the "how to convert your road bike to a TT bike" article, which is certainly useful for many guys, but of course is blasphemy to some of the TT fanatics here.
Cheers,
Pete
