Thinking About the Season

Lots of thought has been going into the upcoming season since I missed so much last year: How much time can I commit to training? Exactly what do I want to do? How many races can I afford this year? Can I balance it all with hubby, kayaking, and the gardens. Wouldn't it be grand to not plan and just go ride? No worries of cash in the pockets, property maintenance, and pleasing the spouse -- just ride your friggin bike? Those of you that do that are very, very lucky campers. (Tomi McMillar!) Well I'm not as lucky, and DO want to keep it all balanced so I think I came up with a plan that matches the budget and the spouse's plans for kayak trips. The focus will be long endurance mountain biking with some Adventure tris and Cap City in September and October. With the exception of October, I'm planning on one race a month to stay in the budget. Now most folks will say you have to ride a lot of hours to do long endurance rides. True. But I found a good training strategy on Ultracycling.com that matched my balance needs and the long hours are compacted into one really long ride per week. The training looks like this: two higher intensity rides during the week for an hour or two, and a long, steady ride (not slow - steady which means constant steady heart-rate riding. No lollygagging, taking breaks, drinking a beer, etc.) once a weekend increasing by 10% every other weekend up to 75% of my goal two weeks prior to the ride. On the off weekends, do fast-paced tempo rides for 3ish hours. It's perfect! One ride a weekend allows the other day for kayaking/gardens/hubby stuff not to mention riding every other day or two allows plenty of time for recovering old bones and muscles. And the timing of 10% increase works out perfect for Zach's Michaux Mash (I think I'm fit enough to do that one now), the Michaux 40-miler (weather permitting), the MonTour 75 miler (always wanted to do that one), and after all that, I'll be ready for Big Bear 24 hour in June and will continue with another 40 miler of Michaux in July (maybe - or maybe I'll just ride for free on Rattling Creek for 40 miles) and then Rattling Creek 50 miler in August. From there, I'll see if I want to focus more on the fun Adventure tris for the remainder of the year or think about the Ironcross. Not sure yet on that. I love it when a plan comes together! Yeh baby.... now how the hell can I drop 5-7 very stubborn pounds?