Not Up for Much

Kinda wound up spinning my wheels a bit today.  I guess it's probably from being a little overzealous this past week with my training.  It's dawned on me that I'm going to have to go a little less hard in the gym if I'm going to want to give it a go on the bike for this race season.  My endurance on the bike has always been a strength, so I'm not too concerned with that at the moment.  The nature of enduro racing being what it is-with high intensity periods followed by low intensity periods-is forcing me to think about my training differently than in the past when I was just an endurance racer.

So far, my training has been high intensity, really hard but short gym sessions.  My thought is to have most of my intensity come from that early on, and then start to incorporate specific hard sessions on the mountain bike once the season comes closer.  I say "season" more referring to the Spring right now as I've yet to plan any actual races.  The planning part will have to come a bit later when Anne and I can sit down and figure out what races are going to work where in our calendars.  Her races have a higher priority than mine, so we'll have to plan accordingly.

Back to training, I'm toying with the notion of cutting my gym sessions from about 5 a week to 3 a week and ramping up my riding volume.  Last week, I did a couple double day sessions that worked well, but left me tired and quite fatigued.  I think it's best if I let my fitness come around first before doing too many 2-a-days.  Also, while you can compliment what you do on the bike with what you do in the gym, there's really no substitute for getting in good saddle time.  Spending about 3 solid sessions on the road and the rest on the mountain bike working skills should be a good plan moving forward.

The ride today wound up being a little more of a "fun and adventure" ride than anything else.  We got about an inch of fresh snow covering the trails from last night's snow that provided quite a bit of fun.  I haven't ridden in the snow in ages, so getting my wheels underneath me required a little bit of patience. Also, having not really ridden in the cold for over a year didn't give me the best idea of what to wear when the temps were well below freezing.  The long and short of it was that I dressed too little and got cold early.  It's tough to come back from being cold nearly as soon as you start, but I did my best to get in what I could.  Tomorrow is another day and I plan on getting in some more quality riding time then.

One other thing that has been on my mind a lot has been rest.  I posted a few days ago about making sure I get proper rest, and since I haven't been terrific in doing so.  I've done alright to get a good nights sleep, but there are other things such as foam rolling, stretching, and getting to bed even earlier that I could be actively doing but I'm not.  Also, my diet still needs to be gotten under control, and that's something I have absolutely no excuse about.  I've always got the "tomorrow" idea going in my head, but it's just something I've got to take the bull by the horns and control for myself.  After all, no one can have more control over what I shove in my mouth than I do!