It's been a few days obviously since my last post so I'll try to re-cap as best as I can what I've been doing the last 6 days. The training has been going according to plan and I haven't missed any rides or strayed from the program so I'm feeling pretty good heading in to this weekend's State Crit Championship. I did a few easy rides on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and then Saturday's ride was a little more difficult but only 2 hours in length and it didn't include any intervals. Sunday I did a great family ride with Melissa and Xavier and it basically served its purpose as a recovery pace ride. We did an hour long ride in New Berlin on the freshly paved New Berlin Recreation Trail and it was a fun, easy ride that everyone certainly enjoyed. I'm trying to get my wife in to cycling and with time constraints it's been difficult for her to ride but we have now ridden together the last two Sundays for a total of 30 miles. Last week we did 20 miles on Sunday, which was by far her furthest ride ever, and then we did 10 miles with our son this week and she said that it seemed easy. Maybe by the end of the year I'll get her out for a 40-50 mile ride, we'll see though. Around the house I've just been doing the normal stuff, working on the yard, remodeling the kitchen, cleaning up, basically all the fun stuff. Sunday night after the ride we went to Zoo a la Carte at the Milwaukee County Zoo and fed ourselves until we couldn't walk anymore, I weigh about 3lbs more now but it was well worth it. Yesterday was a rest day and I was supposed to go to the target range with my friend to shoot some guns but we got there too late and it was already closed. We ended up just relaxing at his house and enjoyed a couple of good beers, probably not ideal training fluids, but I'm sure it won't affect my performance on Saturday. Tonight I have to do a 2 hour ride with 3 sets of Descending Intervals which basically start at 75 seconds and count down to 30 seconds with equal recovery in between each rep. After each set I'll rest for 5 minutes and then start again, it's great training for crit races so hopefully I'm feeling good and can get in an optimal workout. After tonight I have a couple of easy rides tomorrow and Thursday and then Friday I'll do a couple of Power Intervals to open the legs for Saturday. Right now the forecast for Saturday is calling for a 40% chance of Thunderstorms, I'm praying that it holds out as that could really wreck the race strategy!
As an aside, anyone who wants an inspirational story and some motivation to get off their lazy butt should check out the progress of Saul Raisin on his website at www.saulraisin.com. I'm sure most of you know what happened to Saul and have kept up on his subsequent recovery, but if not, you probably wouldn't believe his story. To keep it short, Saul crashed in a European bike race and was in a coma after developing an intracerebral hemorrhage and was basically told he might never develop full function again as a result of his brain damage. After 4 months Saul was riding again on the rollers and trainer, as much as 21 hours per week!! According to his website he is now doing 3 hour rides on the road as well. Check it out and make sure to look at all of his past blog entries and his picture gallery, it's pretty moving stuff. Until next time, happy riding...........
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