Midweek Update

This past week has been a rest week and I've had time for my second hobby, brewing beer. Typically I get to brew about once a month. This past week I was able to get in two batches! Ah yes, it's going to be a good summer. My first batch was a repeat of a success from last summer. A honey amber. Its a high gravity/alcohol content beer with 2 pounds of honey in the 5 gallon batch. It was such a big hit last time around so I had to remake it.

For the second batch I wanted to try an all grain batch. This is brewing straight from the grains without using any pre-prepared and purchased concentrates. I had some time this past Sunday so I bought some grains to make a Summer Pale Ale. This was my second all grain batch, the first was ok... actually I drank it because I'm cheep. It was a Hefeweizen that could have used some fruit to make it better, it had a banana color. Ok, it wasn't that bad but I wanted to try again. So I gave the all grain beer making another shot. I'll keep my fingers crossed and let you know how it turns out later.

On the training and riding front, I've been getting ready for the season and I was beginning to wonder if I was getting any faster. That can be a difficult to answer early season. You know, the trees keep you from seeing the forest. Anyway the training has been focused on endurance and base mile training so how do you tell your getting faster when your staying out of the high end power ranges. Well I got one of my answers on my ride today, I tied my best 60 minute average power output from both 2010 and 2011. I guess things are coming along.

Training Camp Complete

So this past week I was racking up the miles with a second training camp this season. I ended up with about 360 miles, 90 of them on the 29er mountain bike. Actually the mileage isn't all that important, what is important is the time I spent in my power zones. 4+hours in power zone 2 (endurance) and another 4+ hours in power zone 3 (tempo). I only spent about 3 hours in zone 1 (recovery), which is really too easy of an effort to get significant physical adaptation. If you include my heat rate (HR) info from the mountain bike rides, I had 7+ hours in my endurance zone. A whopping 1189 training stress score (TSS - nerdy stuff) over the past 9 days.

So now that it's over, I feel good. Tire but good. I'm on a recovery week this week. Workouts consist of a little intensity but short rides. Rest is as important as the workout. So I guess you could say I'm consolidating for the next work phase.

Actually the weather was really nice last week. Unlike the high winds we've been having the past few days. Made me laugh when I saw this video, looks like some not so fun spring training along the Colorado front range. It's hard to motivate yourself for this kind of a ride everyday.

Training Camp #2

This week I/my coach has bumped up the training load to get in a big block of base/endurance miles. I could really tell a huge improvement in my fitness after the first training camp. This camp has a bigger training load.
For this training camp I have traveled... nowhere. I've taken, no time off work. I have and continue to try and squeeze in the riding time around everything else. So far it's working but I certainly couldn't keep this up longer than a week. Thankfully the weather has been incredible and I've been out and about. I've been commuting to work and taking the long route back and forth. I love riding by gas stations, $3.30 :).
Since this past Saturday I have over 13 hours on the bike and over 200 miles. About 70 of those miles have been on the Cannondale Flash 29er the rest on the SuperSix. Really that's not the important part, what's important is how they've been paced; at a quality endurance level (200-220 W). My base fitness will be larger than ever before, the theory is it will give you a foundation to build on later in the season. I'll let you know.

Work Life ImBalance

Sorry for the lack of posts. Life has been...... complicated. Over the past couple of weeks I've had a big deliverable due at work that required a lot of extra time. The work was hard and long but my group made the deadline. So, life is slowly returning to normal.

During those weeks l had to strip life down to the basics; Family, Work and Health. There weren't any extras. Unfortunately I had to miss a few workouts because there's only 24 hours in the day. I do have to give an extra special thanks to my wonderful wife, she also made sacrifices and really helped me get through it all.

The training is coming along. I'm spending most of my time doing endurance type rides. I do feel like my base endurance is getting good. I'm certainly ahead of where I was last year, not only in my power output but also in how I'm feeling. I really noticed in my rides this weekend were I was able to get out for long hard rides with out excessive fatigue. Not sure I'm race ready but there's time.

More updates soon.