The Dust Settles
...on yesterdays ride.
Slept and ate well yesterday (although no food immediately after).
Plenty of water and drinking and a bit of stretching.
Quads are properly mullered today, will swim at lunchtime to give them some extra recovery. Feel tired in myself but to be expected after 5+ hours in the saddle yesterday - it's all so new to me, even marathons are well over in 3 hours!
So got to thinking today about training and my weaknesses. I think the quickest gains in my cycling are in the hills. I need to do some hard hill work to get my quads strengthened.
I still need time in saddle and I like doing a quick flat blast but incorporating one very tough ride and one tough turbo session per week is going to be an essential.
When the nights draw in and it gets colder I think a longer tough TT session indoors will be enough. We'll monitor to see if I am getting stronger and in January I'll see how it's moved on.
I think the 21 mile route I used with Ian T is a good blast for me as a yardstick to see how I am improving. In theory I should be blasting that and into the new year maybe making it a 30+ ride.
A good interval for me would be from the bottom of Bourn up the hill to the A248 flyover - lot of climbing, very hard and a good 3.5 mile workout. Once my legs have recovered I will try that maybe 3 times at tempo to see how I get on.
It also got me thinking about running - it's easy to hide on the flat with running as you can stick to flat races but I need to start working the hills. So for the next 8 weeks I will concentrate my recovery runs around the trails in Cambourne (7 miles) and I will do hilly tempo runs from now to get my strength up.
So there it is. My main focus is on strength work. Strong quads and climbing muscles for (a) biking and (b) XC season. Still planning on hitting 400+ bike miles (currently 120), a 10k tempo run (sub 6) and 10k of swimming but emphasis is all on strength.
Slept and ate well yesterday (although no food immediately after).
Plenty of water and drinking and a bit of stretching.
Quads are properly mullered today, will swim at lunchtime to give them some extra recovery. Feel tired in myself but to be expected after 5+ hours in the saddle yesterday - it's all so new to me, even marathons are well over in 3 hours!
So got to thinking today about training and my weaknesses. I think the quickest gains in my cycling are in the hills. I need to do some hard hill work to get my quads strengthened.
I still need time in saddle and I like doing a quick flat blast but incorporating one very tough ride and one tough turbo session per week is going to be an essential.
When the nights draw in and it gets colder I think a longer tough TT session indoors will be enough. We'll monitor to see if I am getting stronger and in January I'll see how it's moved on.
I think the 21 mile route I used with Ian T is a good blast for me as a yardstick to see how I am improving. In theory I should be blasting that and into the new year maybe making it a 30+ ride.
A good interval for me would be from the bottom of Bourn up the hill to the A248 flyover - lot of climbing, very hard and a good 3.5 mile workout. Once my legs have recovered I will try that maybe 3 times at tempo to see how I get on.
It also got me thinking about running - it's easy to hide on the flat with running as you can stick to flat races but I need to start working the hills. So for the next 8 weeks I will concentrate my recovery runs around the trails in Cambourne (7 miles) and I will do hilly tempo runs from now to get my strength up.
So there it is. My main focus is on strength work. Strong quads and climbing muscles for (a) biking and (b) XC season. Still planning on hitting 400+ bike miles (currently 120), a 10k tempo run (sub 6) and 10k of swimming but emphasis is all on strength.
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