Endurance block comments

I'm back in Jackson after a long two-day drive back from the Mexico border. I did what I set out to accomplish this past week getting 25 hours of bike time in 8 days. For a near 50 year old working stiff, that is a significant chunk of training volume. Attempting to be intelligent about it, I drove home without getting on the bike, effectively getting a two -day recovery. My sensation walking around today is that I am quite recovered. My Restwise score (80) indicates as much. Of course, numbers are great but all I care about is how I will feel in the weight room and on the ride after work today. Time will tell.

It would have been nice to have plotted out my recovery scores during this period but being on the road does not always allow easy access to a computer or a scale. I definitely missed some interesting data collection. However, the season is long and little will be missed from here on out. In spite of not having hard numbers in front of me during the week, my internal barometer was revealing. Poor sleep, irritability, some training apathy all point to significant over-reaching. I was also able to see these markers change from day to day as each training bout varied. Because the goal of the week was to get big hours, even my so-called recovery day was twice as long as usual (2 hours vs 1). Still, the improvement in some of the measures above was noticeable.

On two of the days, I did five or six all-out sprints with 30 seconds in my biggest gear. I felt that, since I am racing most weekends, I wanted to maintain an element of speed in spite of the overall goal of the block. These motor recruitment patterns are quickly lost if not trained. These efforts also allowed me to "feel" where my recovery really was. Both times the sensations were positive.

So, now it's time to race again. The focus for awhile is going to be on less miles and more intensity. Clearly, after my first few races, that was where I was lacking. Between all the skiing I did this winter and plenty of early season volume on the bike my base is more than adequate. There are several high-level coaches that have dropped the volume of their athletes' programs and seen big jumps in performance. These instances involved elite triathletes which, as a group, probably represent the most over-trained athletes in all of sport. Additionally, master-level road racing does not involve huge distances. Now, I will be doing Tour of Park City this year which is an eight-hour event so I will need to attend to some additional endurance days as the race approaches. But for now, I will play with shorter and harder days with some additional endurance work on weekends as the schedule allows. - Brian 

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