Thursday, February 26, 2009

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

Thursday coming home on Damian I experienced sweet sweet bliss. I had read the chapter in "Base Building for Cyclists" on pedaling technique and I learned all about the mechanics of pedaling and power efficiency and when and how to push at what part of the stroke on the pedals and it transported me to a beautiful happy wonderful place. I achieved (with some effort and concentration) this BEAUTIFUL cadence where my legs were pumping simultaneously in perfect rhythm to eachother, spinning through higher gears at a faster cadence than I had ever done before - it was simply sublime. Beautiful. It's experiences like that which make me love cycling. Euphoria. And of course it snowed on Thursday, so I couldn't ride in.

I. am. done. with. snow. I. want. it. to. be. spring.

Friday (today) Paul is taking me out for an absolutely FABULOUS dinner at Le Gourmand, a quaint beautiful French restaurant that I am SO very excited about going to. Since reservations are for 7, I have to jet after work and between needing to get pretty and impracticality of biking, I've - once again - not biked in to work today. Which sucks, but there's balances that must be obtained in life. I can't ALWAYS do what I want. Meh.

So due to this and other things, I've decided this is my first "Rest Week" - even though I've really only taken Monday-Friday off-ish and that tomorrow I'll be officially starting my training schedule. After much bike-geeking and such last night with Andrew I've come up with a training schedule that doesn't really prescribe to the book's base training program, but since I'm coming from and going to a MUCH different place than the readers he's writing to - and I just prefer to do things my own way - I don't really mind that it's different. I learned a lot from the book though and highly recommend it to others if you're interested in cycling and raising your fitness ceiling/aerobic endurance.

My immediate goals are as follows:
1. Do a century (100 miles) on my bike in one straight shot
2. Do the 16 1/2 mile "hills route" to completion without getting out of the saddle
3. Be able to the "hills route" in a low exertion rate most of the entire way.

So I'm going to do around 23.75 hours (roughly) of exercise a week.
Monday = commute and 45 minutes easy cardio
Tuesday = commute, upper body weight lifting, dancing for several hours
Wednesday = commute (maybe) EASY day!!!
Thursday = commute + hills route
Friday = commute, 1 1/2 hours lower body weight lifting and core workout
Saturday = BIKE 2 hours focusing on technical skills (mountain biking)
Sunday = long ride, working up to a century. (76 mile goal this weekend....why 76 instead of 75? Because Paul's longest ride was only 75 miles. And I'm competitive...just a little bit :)

Every 4th week is a rest week where I'll do 2/3rd workload or less to let my body recuperate and build back up before I punish it again. Anyway, I'm stoked about this training and look forward to schluffing off more weight and increasing my power to weight ratio so the hills are easier. Speaking of weight - I'm down an even 40 lbs. now.


(Oh - and for those of you who are wondering why I'm talking about training, focusing on stuff like pedal technique, and all that stuff, I really want to try out cyclocross this fall/winter. So that's what I'm keeping in mind as a long term goal.)

2 comments:

  1. When you say "without getting out of the saddle" does that mean staying seated the whole time, or just not having to walk for any of the route?

    I haven't tried to do the whole thing seated, but I suspect that a couple of the hills have grades that would make it very difficult to generate enough torque, with good technique, while seated.

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  2. "without getting out of the saddle" means just not walking any of the route. Standing is more than acceptable.

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