Time for Some Rest

So it's been a long 3 weeks of cycling, 16 to 18.50 hours per week have been spent pedaling away in order to get ready for the death march on July 11th. The progression resulted in two centuries this past week, 330 miles, 18.50 hours and now I'm officially tired. This week will be spent resting, although I didn't really plan it that way. I did have a little bit more intensity in the program for the week but the weather and my legs have made me change my mind and now I'll spin it out this week to allow the legs to recover. I'll still be doing about 16-17 hours but it will all be slow, recovery pace efforts to allow my body to recover a bit. If I'm feeling good then I'll try an effort or two at the end of the week but I was supposed to do the UW-Whitewater RR this weekend along with the Omro RR so those might be the only efforts that I do this week, it's probably best to wait until then. If I'm still not feeling good at all and my HR is suppressed like it was on my ride yesterday then I may skip one of the races this weekend and just take a day to do another training ride. I had trouble getting past 172 bpm on my ride yesterday and that is about 20 beats off my normal max, so I know my body is saying, whoa, cut me some slack. I always listen. Another indicator is my resting HR today is 54, that's high. Lately it's been in the low 40s to 45 on any given day, I've checked it 3 times today and it's been 54 twice and 55 once, so again, I'm listening. Obviously heart rate isn't always the best indicator, power is better, but I don't have a power meter of any sort, so I have to go by HR, and in my opinion power is only good on the bike, off the bike you obviously can't deny what your resting HR tells you, and of course other indicators like general leg soreness and fatigue are big determining factors as well. On the bike there are things like caffeine intake, hydration, temperature and humidity, wind, and stress that can affect HR, but your power should remain the same more or less when those factors come in to play. Power numbers will fluctuate when you are overtrained or sick, that is when it's good to have a power meter, overtraining will show in the numbers on the bike, which unfortunately is what I can't tell right now. Yeah, maybe something yesterday affected my HR and my power was the same as always but I'm just going by feel and I don't think that I had the same power as last week. I guess I better start saving for a power meter next year, it'd be a good item to add to my training repertoire, especially if I start coaching next year. Anyways, tonight it's supposed to rain at about 6:30ish, the plan is to go home, ride around my neighborhood or within 10 minutes of my house anyways, until it starts raining, and then head home. Hopefully I can get in an hour at least, 90 minutes would be better though, but I'll take what I can get. Tomorrow is supposed to bring some rain as well but I'm hoping for a break to get out for 2.5 hours or so after work, even if I have to do the neighborhood thing again, I'll do whatever it takes to get outside. Thursday and Friday will be more of the same duration but thankfully it's going to be nice and sunny so I'll be hitting some remote destinations outside of my immediate area, probably up to Dousman and back on Thursday and probably a big Waukesha loop on Friday. Saturday and Sunday as I mentioned might be race days, I'm hoping I feel good enough although I'll go in to both races with almost no race training at all for the year. I've done two days of hill repeats, other than that it's been all endurance rides and tempo work. If they were completely flat I'd have no problem, the race flyer for Whitewater says one "dominant hill" though so that doesn't bode well for me. I'm willing to give it a go, it's only 40 miles, maybe I'll get really lucky and be at 100% and that will be about 60% of everyone else, but it might just keep me in the peloton. Well, that's it for now I guess, more to follow ahead of the race weekend, I'll let you know how I'm feeling and hopefully I'll be doing two races. Until next time.....