Preparing for the 2006 Season

This year I've decided to change my approach to training. In 2005, I logged just over 4600 miles on my bike. Looking back through my simple training log, I can summarize that after subtracting race miles (I raced 15 times) and the Tuesday night team rides (I rode probably 90% of those), I would guess that nearly 4000 of those miles were spent mostly in the L2 zone, a.k.a. endurance rides. L2 is great for the off-season, or if you're a club rider if your biggest goal is doing the local charity ride, but if you're a racer, you need to spend some more time up at the higher intensities if you want to have some success. If races were spent at L2 everybody would be doing it. I came to this realization last season during the Blossom Challenge. I quickly understood that I didn't nearly have enough matches to hang with these guys and that to be successful in 2006, I would need to increase the size of my matchbook.

I had a lot of time to think about that race, along with all the others I've participated in the past 2 1/2 years. My old training plan of just logging in some hours and miles on the bike worked when I was a Cat 5, but to be a good Cat 4 (I'm shooting to be Rick Parr quality, who just upgraded to Cat 3) and eventually upgrade up as well, I needed to put together a plan. My plan quickly developed after some web research and speaking with fellow teammates that I needed to work with Velodynamics coaching services. I'm not actually using a full time coach, but more of a consultant, sort of the way Jan used Rudy Pevanage the past few years....Only on a way smaller budget. Now someone might be asking why I chose them in lieu of some more well known companies such as CTS, etc. It's simple, I'm not made of money and I also liked the idea of having someone local who knew the races, the terrain and was close so when life intervenes in the schedule, I can quickly make changes to the program with their advice. It also helps that Charles Howe (President of Velodynamics) is one of the foremost experts on power based training in the area and that's my new toy this year, a PowerTap powermeter. Together, we've set up a training plan based upon some of my key races for the 2006 season and I'm quickly learning how to train with power. I'll share the plan in the upcoming weeks but as a quick preview, I'm already ahead of where I was at this time last year in terms of fitness. I can quantify this from the team's roller races we've been having on Thursday evenings. Everyone takes 5 minutes on "the" rollers. The goal would be to put in as many miles as you can in that time period. This year I'm already putting in over 1/4 of a mile from my best times last year. 2006 should be exciting.