Feb 29 2008
It’s been an enjoyable weather week. For February, temperatures in the mid to upper 50’s while staying mostly dry, is pretty sweet. The spring bulbs are coming up, the chickens have started laying eggs after taking the winter off, and it’s been nice to open up the windows and air the house out. After this, I may go take a long walk on the beach…
After cleaning out the cross bike, I’ve been taking it to work all week which felt…strange. Since cross ended, I got the fixie out and have been riding it non-stop for the past three months.
First, it was weird going fast again. Second, I’d nearly forgotten how to shift and coast. Third, brakes are a beautiful thing. And fourth, I am still amazed at what a beautiful, solid, and huge bike it is. It really is dreamy to ride around on it.
What this bike transition also told me is that after trying to punch it up a little hill, I feel like I have the lungs of a 70-year old emphysema patient. Good God. Interestingly enough, I was just reading in Bicycling in their training article where now that the winter of strength training is done, it’s time to get the legs used to firing faster. While my strength went up considerably, my legs and lungs are clearly not ready for fast twitch and endurance work.
So what’s next.
Horning’s Hustle is 5 very short weeks away. Given the fact that I’ll also be racing Expert (6 laps or about 24 miles), I need to be realistic about how it’ll go. I made a choice to concentrate on strength over the winter instead of maintaining the fitness I built up for cross. Sacrificing early season results for longer-term goals is an unfortunate consequence.
The short of this is that I anticipate sucking wind for the next 4 to 6 weeks until I can get some semblance of endurance back. I’ll obviously need to mix some speed and hill work in there but the bulk of the riding will either be aerobic or sub-threshold work. This all sounds very fun.