DMGGetting After It
I had a cold the week before Christmas, and was out of town
between Christmas and the New Year, so I didn't do much any
training during that time. Dec. 27 - Jan. 1 was mostly full of
relaxing by the fire and eating holiday goodies.
Now it's time to re-focus.
The dates for the 2016 OC Classic Mountain Bike Series have been announced, with races in March, April, September, and November.
I've taken a naïve attempt at syncing my training schedule with those races. There's no way to be really ready to rock for the first race, coming up in just 10 weeks. So I've settled on an abbreviated cycle targeting the second race (in April), followed by a full base/build/peak cycle aimed at the races in September and November.
All of that might go out the window as I learn more about how to organize my training. But it's workable for now. And this is my first year really trying to train like this and target races. I'm likely to learn more by sticking to a consistent plan than by course correcting too much along the way.
The rest of January is simple: tough gym workouts and easy rides focusing on steady effort and bike handling skills. That means I have a few weeks to figure out what training I should be doing on the bike once February kicks off.
I do know that I have to get comfortable on Rock-It's technical downhill if I'm going to have a decent day at Aliso. I'd really like to take an afternoon and head out there and just ride up and down the rock section a bunch of times. Nothing builds confidence riding down like being able to ride up.
And, honestly, while training will move forward at full speed, thinking about training needs to go on the back burner. Playing with spreadsheets and looking through old training data and reliving past rides is a really fun mental space to be in, but I've got plenty of grown-up stuff that needs my full attention. I have 5 lunch hours a week to play on my bike. The other 163 hours in the week need to be 100% focused on the here-and-now.
Time to stop tinkering with the plan and get after it.