Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Getting Serious Again

The last few weeks have been pretty relaxed on the bike as I haven't really had a structured riding program and have just basically been riding at casual speeds for 2 to 2.5 hours with the exception of my long ride last Sunday. I am now 4 weekends away from the State Crit Championship so Monday I started ramping up my ride intensity again and have gone back to a structured program until the race on the 26th. I did a 42 mile ride on Monday at Endurance pace and pushed it on any hills just to get my legs used to the intensity again. Last night I did a 36 mile ride and did 2 sets of 7 x 30 second Speed Intervals. Speed Intervals are perfect training for criteriums as they simulate the burst coming out of corners and the high cadence that I use during crits. I'll be doing the Speed Intervals again tomorrow so that means tonight will just be a short recovery ride between the two days of intervals. Friday I'll just be doing a short recovery ride as well ahead of the 100 miles I'll be doing on Saturday for the MS150. Sunday will be 75 miles, again for the MS ride and then Monday will be a rest day. I'll do a couple of heavy interval days next week followed by a gradual taper heading in to the race. I'll obviously update my training as the weeks progress towards the race and let you all know how it's going.
Anyways, I'm also back to work today after 5 weeks off for my sabbatical and it's been rough going so far. I was up at 4:50a.m. and in to work by 6:00 and I have a feeling I'm going to sleep pretty good tonight. After long periods of vacation like this companies should allow people to come back gradually, like 2 hours the first day, then 4 hours, 6, and then finally the full 8-9 hours until the employee is fully acclimated again. I'm definitely for this idea but instead I'll be working 11 hours today, tomorrow, and Friday. Good times, good times. Only 16 more days until my next vacation day though, so I've got that to look forward to........until next time.

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