The little stuff

I truly believe that some of the biggest and easiest gains an athlete can make are the little things they can do "off the bike."

Rest, recovery,stretching and nutrition on the bike.

There are enough options out there for recovery drinks but I'm a big fan of the Endurox R4 and the Hammer Recoverite. When I get back from a ride or finish a race sucking down some calories is always the first thing I do, usually before anything else. Once I have my drink in hand I settle into some stretching while my muscles are still warm. I would recommend shooting for replacing close to as many calories you burnt over the same time as your workout. I use 500 calories/hr as a guideline for easy rides and 1000 cal/hr for racing... Once I drink my recovery drink I continue to stuff my face with real food over the next X amount of hours, if it was a 3 hour ride then I eat for 3 hours. For some reason I think it's a good idea to mix up the recovery drink you use every now and then. I usually keep the Endurox and Recoverite around and switch. Being the OC freak that I am I have a method for that too; I use the recoverite for rides less than 3 hrs and mix Endurox with chocolate soy milk (or reg milk) for the heavy duty training days or long rides...

Warm up easy for at least 20 minutes, stop and stretch, resume. If your back is a big problem, like mine used to be, this may help if you aren't already doing it.

Much to my girlfriends dismay, every night when I get home I stack pillows up on the coffee table and put my feet up until I go to bed. Feet up whenever you can.

Nutrition on the bike- rides less than 2 hrs just carb blends spiked with electrolyte powder if cramping is an issue or you sweat a ton, I shoot for 100-200 calories/hour depending on how hard/long I am going. Rides less than 1 hour- just water. Rides more than 2 hours you should be starting to eat/drink around 250 calories, with a little protein from 15 minutes after you start riding up until the end. If you start to feel hungry it's too late. We can talk more about this and maybe I'll sell you my top secret endurance recipe!

Believing in what you are doing

You are probably going to find that when your workload is moderate and you are feeling good that you aren't doing enough and want to ride for an extra hr or do an extra interval... Leave something in the tank and safe that for racing... As the training load increases we are going to make much bigger gains in fitness over the course of 3-4 week blocks than you could ever come close to doing by riding that extra hr or doing that extra interval. You really have to be disciplined and look at the "big picture" which may be some priority races in the fall or, for the realist, may be a year or two away.

I promise you that towards the end of a training block, the cumulative work load will make you feel more tired than waking up sore because you pushed it into the red over one extra climb the day before. That cumulative load is what we are going for.

During the next couple weeks of base training you will have this nagging feeling that you should be doing more. It numbs your senses a bit and isn't as satisfying as getting the endorphins rushing but the more you do it the more you will realize that that if you save that desire, instead of burning it up all the time, you will have it when you need it. Leave it in the tank!

April 14-20

I really want to ask you to take a big chunk of time to rest, nothing else, but considering the winter we have been having and the fact that it is going to be a really nice week we will work that in after the 5/10 Castlewood race. Hopefully we can rebound that rest into a better result at Matson so you believe more in what we are doing.

For the four weeks our goal is to put some quality base miles in on the bike. This means all aerobic riding. No group rides and no mountain biking. Try to think of flat courses to ride and if not I would recommend a 12-27 cassette and concentrate on really going slow on the hills. Everytime your HR goes above the target zone is counter productive. It takes a while to really learn to ride this way, but it is invaluable.

We want to shoot for 10 hrs of riding with a long ride of 3 hrs to start. You are going to feel like you want to do more but we are going to build each subsequent week.

Weeks are Mon-Sun. Since there is no real recovery time needed I would shoot for something like this, the order is not planned other then the two longer workouts being back to back. As long as you get the long ride in all at once you can split any of the others into an AM and PM.

Mon- Full day of rest- NOTHING! (this will start to be important when we are racing Sun's)
Tues- 1 hrs
Wed- 1.5 hrs
Thurs- 1 hr
Fri- 1.5 hrs
Sat- 2 hrs
Sun- 3 hrs

racing to race

well there is the list, yeah the one on the right.

i guess my big race, the be all end all race is the berryman epic. if i had to put all my eggs in a basket i would want to do really well there.

this is where it all began

where do we go from here?