Part 2: What I learned in 2009 and 2010 goals

I was thinking about this the other day and believe it or not, 2010 will be my 30th year of racing bicycles in one form or another. I started racing BMX in 1980 and did that until 1999. I actually road raced for 1 season in1984 with CRRC, but my passion for BMX took over. In looking back I wish I would have stuck with road racing, but then who knows, I probably wouldn't be doing in now. I dabbled in mountain bike racing from 1986 or so till maybe 2003 getting more serious towards the end. I got a road bike in 2001 to supplement my mountain bike riding and training. It worked very well and I got a lot faster on the mountain bike.

It got to a point where I started to enjoy road riding again and the racing seemed to suit me better, so thats my current direction to this day. So back to the 2010 racing season. My first race for the season is a couple days away. In preparing for this year and what kind of training plan I'm going to follow, I always like to look back on previous years training diaries and power data to determine what worked and what didn't work so well.

I guess for the most part I've been following the basic periodization model training plan since that first year I road raced in 1984. I think the only thing really different is the day to day intensity. Back then there wasn't a lot of electronic training computers like there are now, so you just kind of did everything by feel. It's funny how each year the basic model has stayed the same, but the training philosophy has changed. I guess in some ways you could say it's come full circle.

Last year was kind of strange in that I set 3 main goals: Get my FTP to around 300 watts- Upgrade to a cat 2- Get more consistent finishes. I thought it would take longer, but it seemed to all happen by mid April last year. Well, the finishes weren't as good once I upgraded, but it was better overall than 2008 when my results were either really good or really bad. The point is, I seemed to lose a lot of my motivation once I accomplished everything I set out to do.

This year I made some new goals that are obtainable, but tougher and should take longer. My biggest race this year is going to be the Joe Martin stage race, so I started the training year planning to do more volume. I like how you can discuss how many hours a week you plan on riding with other riders, and somehow only the longest single week hours gets across and then gets exaggerated and that info gets passed along to someone else, and next thing you know you're riding 30 hours a week!

Anyhow, so far this year everything has gone mostly as planned training wise. It's definitely been tougher with the weather being like it has for the past 3 months so I had to improvise some here and there. All of my new equipment seems to be working well and I'm looking forward to testing it out this weekend.