Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Yes, I am still riding and training and even racing (sort of). I haven't written about this in a while simply because I figured most of my readers either know what I'm up to or are bored by my spinning my wheels. Never-the-less, I thought I'd update those who might be curious as to my goings on in the two-wheeled world.

The racing and training season is definitely winding down. I find the motivation to get out and really put in a hard effort harder and harder to come by, especially when fall seems to be delayed and the weather remains not only warm but almost unbearably humid. My two hard time trial training rides this week were carried out in muggy morning conditions which conspired to play havoc with my power data gathering equipment. Tuesday's ride I managed to get a good data set but Thursday was a loss. I was hoping to do a long ride this weekend but my body was pretty clear with me that sleeping was a good thing and shorter rides were better than longer ones. I managed to get in two good indoor rides but neither was as long as I had planned and there was much napping to be had.

I was supposed to race in Augusta last weekend but the threat of a hurricane and the resulting low registration led to the event's cancellation. That was going to be my last competitive event of the year which would have allowed me to switch over to long tempo rides for the month of September along with a few charity rides and centuries to enjoy the fine fall weather we usually have. The problem is that the state time trial championship got moved to October 18th. That was one of my BIG goals when the season started and so I'm loathe to give up on it. That means I'm still training and will be for another month. I managed to find another time trial at the 40 k length to race on Oct. 4th that's going to give me some intermediate motivation but this is going to be hard.

To be honest, I've never raced this many races in a year and the toll is beginning to show up. As I mentioned before, I don't have the motivation I did and my body is demanding more rest and recovery time. I'm worried I'll either overtrain or I'll do something else stupid that'll put my season next year at risk. Still, I can't give up on this goal. The one thing I wanted to do this year when I decided to come back and race was to get to the state championship and race really hard.

On the positive side, I've switched about 50% of my hard training rides completely over to the the TT bike (up from 20-25%) and I can really tell the difference it's making on my position. I'm a bunch more aerodynamic and I can feel the muscles in my hips getting stronger. The rides are mentally very challenging because the intervals basically consist of going at my threshold power for between 15 minutes and 1 hour depending on what I'm doing. That means there are only a few routes I can do that'll let me maintain that effort uninterrupted for that length of time and that don't have overly steep climbs or descents. That means the routes get boring quickly. The other thing is that there's little variety in the workout itself which makes getting on the bike difficult. Hard to get excited about putting your head down for an hour and suffering when what you'd really like to do is crawl back into bed or sit on the porch with a cold Harvest Moon.

During the next four weeks or so I'll be looking at coaches and doing a few interviews to see about hiring the right coach to work with me to take me to a few new goals next season. I'm tired of being a Cat 4 racer. I'm know that I can be better and stronger than that but I seem to have plateaued. I know that with the proper training regime I can make that step up but I don't have the experience or mental energy to figure out all the training based on power to get there. I decided that I'd rather hire someone who knows how this works and who can teach me and include me in the decision making process. Who knows, maybe I can find someone who wouldn't mind taking me under their wing after I get one racing in a few years and teach me how to coach. I know I'd be a good coach, I just need the experience of being coached. If you know of someone who I might contact (Gary, send me the name and email of that coach you've worked with) let me know and I'll include them in the interview process. I figure that with something like this, they'll want to interview me as an athlete and I'll want to know more about their coaching process and skills.

Well, another week is about to begin. Have a good one and I'll be back soon.

Thanks for Reading.

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