I had to turn around at the Elaine Hammer bridge this morning. I realized I had left the dog in the backyard. She's a Husky. As a breed, they like to escape. This one likes to dig under the fence. The trip into work was 39 minutes and nearly 9 miles.
It took 33 minutes to get home, roughly 13mph. I used my TT bars as armrests and just relaxed. I never put it in the big ring.
There was a great deal of commuter traffic on the trails this afternoon. Folks with backpacks and panniers and big smiles on their faces. Every one of them enjoying the beautiful 78 degrees, sunshine and nearly calm winds.
I tried to smile.
I think I'm kinda bummed at my performance in this past weekend's Capital City Criterium. I simply didn't feel like trying to go fast. My heart rate never climbed over 145 today.
Maybe that's for the best. Relax. Take it one day at a time. Let my resolve build until I wake up one morning with the urge to push as hard as I can. Hopefully that happens before the Cornhusker State Games TT, roughly a month away.
Alternate speed and serious recovery. If you go hard one day, make your rides slow and easy (like that one) the next day so you can make more gains on your next fast day.
ReplyDeleteWhen you do fast days don't time trial. Make sure your heart is going up and down over the ride. You want 5 minute or so very hard efforts (don't push yourself over the edge, but see how close you can get without doing so), then fall back into a recovery (slow endurance) pace for at least 5 minutes to recover: That's one type of interval.
Unless you're training for time trials, the rest of road racing has to do with matching people's accelerations so they can't drop you.
I started getting a lot more out of cycling, and got faster, when I started ignoring my average speed and started concentrating on recovery days as hard as up tempo days.