Weekly Training Notes #1
This is the first in a planned ongoing series of weekly training notes. If you want more detail, follow me on Strava, and see my full training plan.
This was quite long for a recovery week, but as indicated below, the vast majority was low-intensity and so contributed relatively little fatigue. My overall fitness is now high enough that this volume presents no problems.
For the last few weeks I've been incorporating a dedicated leg-speed workout (now up to 20 minutes at 130 rpm) on my Friday commute ride, to improve my core stability and neuromuscular efficiency. I've extended this by also adding 5 minutes leg speed work to the warmup on each intervals ride. This seems already to be translating into improved acceleration, as these examples show:
following a pretty awful weekend, I decided just to do my own thing on Tuesday's ride. After a few intervals, I beat my own KOM on Seburn Sprint. This was quite impressive considering an almost complete lack of anaerobic work over the past few months and the fact that going for a fast time was an afterthought; I didn't even get up to speed until a third of the way along the segment.
on the final group sprint on Saturday's ride I rapidly got my cadence up into the mid-130s, where I held it easily to the line. I was second in line and went with 250m to go. My acceleration was good enough to stop Billy, who'd positioned himself right behind me, from even getting on my wheel.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when the big guns arrive on the group ride later in the year.
Last summer I had good anaerobic power, but was lacking a true sprinter's 'jump'. This summer I plan to remedy this via leg-speed work (year-round), heavy weight lifting (off- and pre-season) and specific sprint training (in-season). My goal is to be clearly the best on the Island at any effort below 60 seconds, becoming my team's designated sprinter in the Nestor Cup Master's races.
My Thursday Threshold Test wasn't great; I think the pace was a little too easy, plus I only did 20 minutes, rather than 30 (it's been a while since I last tested).
The problem is that in my focus on low- and high-intensity work, I've been neglecting medium intensity on training rides (and making excuses to skip Threshold Tests). So I've decided to incorporate a sweet-spot/threshold block at the end of every intervals ride where I do fewer than the maximum number of sets/reps, and add much more medium intensity work into the Saturday group rides (this should be easy to do, as these rides have now started speeding up).
You can see how much I love this!
After a disappointing experience in the road race last weekend, I've signed up for a gravel ride in the Francis Marion National Forest, just north of Charleston, four weeks from now. The timing works out well, as I'll complete my final pre-season mesocycle, including recovery week, going into the race. It's 100 miles on mixed off-road surfaces, self-supported. This clearly presents a very different challenge than dodging kids at high speed on asphalt.
Designation: Hybrid Recovery Week Time: 20 hours | Distance: 525 km | Low:Medium:High Intensity: 88:10:2 Weight Training: 2 x Lower Body, 1 x Upper Body | Walking: 15 km