2007 Season Preperations

With the whole Elves & More thing happening in December, I found myself at the beginning of January almost two months behind schedule from last year. After I settled myself down a little bit and had a chance to really think about my situation, I realized that I was actually more like four months behind. I forgot the fact that once Will was born in mid August my average riding time went down to really only a few hundred miles per month at the very best. Now statistically I was even worse off than I had previously thought. That was before I started riding again and started looking at my power outputs on some of my tests (I can't say enough how great power meters are in the overall scheme of training). As it turns out, yes I indeed am a thousand or so miles behind where I was at last year but I am no longer thinking about my fitness in terms of miles but in terms of power output. My power output today is actually higher than at this exact time from last year. What do I chalk this up to? Well, probably a portion of that has to be contributed to the fact that last year I didn't fully know my limits or training levels, so I was most likely training at a slightly lower level than I was capable of. Outside of that, I also like to think that with several seasons of racing in my legs now, my body is able to come back around quicker to its previous levels. I've been riding consistently now for 6 weeks and am feeling stronger every day. Here's one of my favorite workouts that I try to do 2 to 3 times a week which makes for a great one hour ride on the rollers or fixed trainer:

10 minute warm up
20 minute effort @ approx. 90% of my seasonal FTP
5 minute recovery
5 minute effort @ approx. 100% of my seasonal FTP
5 minute recovery
5 minute effort @ approx. 100% of my seasonal FTP
10 minute cool down

I'm also working on doing an analysis of my 2006 season. In the next several weeks I hope to try to post some data images that Scott Thor has put together for me. Thanks for reading and I hope now that my mindset is back on riding, I'll be able to post a little more consistently.

brian