I actually started this post a few months ago, and I think the 2011 plan has changed at least twice since then. Anyway, here's the rundown of what I've done and what I'm looking to do the rest of the year.
Since I wasn't planning on doing the Joe Martin stage race this year, I decided to try to cut back on the overall weekly time early in the season. I've been using the Training Peaks WKO software since 2008 and had a pretty good idea of what amount of training stress is required to ride say for example 18 hours or 300 miles in a week.
A lot of folks have been doing more of a "less volume - higher intensity" training model with good results, so I thought I would give it a try this season.
Another thing I wanted to try was more on the bike specific exercises and less crosstraining, lifting weights, etc. One thing I experimented with, and I'm definatley going to do again this winter, is riding an overgeared single speed mountain bike. The Bluff Creek trail is only about 4 miles from my house. Single track riding is way more fun than lifting weights.
So after getting through the main part of the road season, in a nutshell the results were good and not so good. I felt like I went really well Feburary through April and just so-so through June. My race results were ok, actually my best racing with the cat 2's, but my power numbers never really matched what they were the last 2 years. I think the more consistant results are due to just gaining race experience and getting better at using what I have in a more efficient manner. In looking back at all the data I've accumulated, the one common denominator for the best fitness, for me anyway, is lots of miles.
I took a couple of weeks off after the Tulsa Tough, and decided it was time to make a serious deposit to the mileage bank in July. My co-worker/team mate/commuter buddy Brandon is doing the Leadville 100 in August, so we're both going for record miles in July. The goal is at least 1300 miles. So far it's going well. We're both ahead of scheadule. I've got almost 900 miles in so far, and still have 12 days left.
The last Wed night crit was last week. Pretty decent turnout. The weather cooled off a little that evening which was nice. I didn't think I would do very well because I haven't done any high intensity riding in a month and my legs were pretty tired from the big miles, but it went ok. I got 2nd. Maybe could have won if I would have been smarter on the last lap.
My team mate Rob Bell had a camera mounted on his bars and has the entire race on video. It's 45 minutes long broken up into 3 parts. I'll try to get a link up here in the next couple days.
The goal for August is to try and raise my
FTP to as high as possible, and then start fine tuning for the cyclocross season in September. There's a few late season road races mixed in around the same time, hopefully I'll be going pretty good by then.
