A goodbye rye

Though it's been "spring" for a little while, yesterday was the first day that everyone was outside for workouts.

Kind of good to see. Kind of bad to see.

Depending on the day's agenda, seeing another cyclist gunning you down can be pretty frustrating. As such, I favor the lesser travelled routes out of town.

Wednesday, 4/2/2008

It was kind of a high volume day for a rest week, but I found when I took a full on rest week last time, I was pretty dead when races next came around.

Something about consistent workouts keeps the legs fresh.

Friel's books suggest endurance rides, skills work, and testing on your rest weeks. A good friend, pro triathlete, and former coach suggested last season that every 4th week be the same workouts at a reduced volume and lower intensity.

For example, for a sprint workout, if you typically try to get on top of the 13 tooth cog for 15", change it such that you still get out of the saddle and try to spin out your gear, but use the 17 tooth cog.

For LT work, build to the same intensity, but do less intervals and include the build to LT output in your interval time. So if your LT interval would typically be 5 x 8' @ 300W, do 3 x 6' or 3 x 8' where you start at 225 and build to 300 for the last 3'.

Those seemed to work pretty well last season, so I'll probably stick with them again this year and see if I can work in an 8mi TT or an LT test every 4th week to gauge where I am in terms of fitness.

*shrug*

Just rambling and trying to find out what works for "recovery" weeks. Any ideas, feel free to toss them out in the commentary.

At Gym

Had the pleasure of lifting with Dr. 1% again. We did more technique work with bodyweightish goblet and OHS and then deadlifting with some variations (conventional, sumo, and snatch grip).

Squat variations were light. Deads started out with sets of 5 @ fairly light weight...but we were having fun so built up to heavy singles.

Goblets

2 x 10 @ bodyweight
2 x 10 @ 20# DB

OHS

4 x 10 @ BW w/pastel high jump bar
3 x 2 @ Olympic bar. Adding any weight pinches my upper back funny. Same place that hurts when I try to keep good posture on my road bike. Below the left shoulder blade and toward my spine.

I'm guessing it's years of bad posture catching up with me...and now that I'm trying to correct it, my body protests.

Funny how "bad" posture becomes comfortable?

Deads

2 x 5 @ 133 (conventional)
2 x 5 @ 133 (sumo)
2 x 5 @ 111 (snatch grip)
1 x 2 @ 161 (conv)
1 x 2 @ 197 (conv)
1 x 1 @ 243 (conv)

The snatch grip DL's felt surprisingly good.

On Bike

Managed 2 x 30' of commuting and a couple of hours after work on the road bike for about 4 hours easy endurance/recovery pace on the day. I'm glad the daylight is lingering again.