Coming Back From Hiatus

Cycling is a sport that traditionally has a definitive off-season.  In Texas, this off season can be blurred thanks to mostly nice winter weather.  For instance, up until last week, weather in Houston this fall/winter has been downright balmy:  mostly in the 70′s and sunny.  Only now has the temperatures dipped below comfort levels.  Cold days can be brutal, but I just think about kicking the pants off the guys that aren’t willing to brave the elements come race season, and I can always push myself to get out there!

Dressed for around 32 deg F weather! Brrrr. Cold (by Houston standards)

The term “offseason”, for me,  is a bit of a misnomer.  It implies you aren’t doing anything, which in fact is a great way to completely fail during the racing season.  It should probably be called the ‘non-racing’ season.  I have been doing LARGE amounts of work  (for me) since mid October, but at a different intensity than what you would do during the race season.

My big goal was to increase my threshold power numbers to be competitive in the P12 races by February.  In September, I had just started feeling comfortable in the elite races, and I know that to be competitive was a lofty but achievable goal.  The way I would do it is by getting a coach and working my butt off.  My coach is.. David Wenger!  So far, we have been working together for almost 2 months, and it has been great.

Couple things about coaching.  It is actually probably not necessary, but can be extremely helpful.  I think it is up to the individual.  Through college and my first year in Houston, I self coached.  I learned from my mistakes but never got a perfect grasp on when to go really hard and when to take the extra rest.  I never put it totally together.  I was spending lots of time trying to come up with viable plans and approaches.  I feel like I am at a point now where I need the expertise and know-how to get things right and get to that next level.  With a great job, I have the money to spend on coaching, which frees up time and thinking about workout plans.  Also, a coach does not make you fast, you make you fast.   The individual is the one who will put in the volume to achieve their goals.  A coach will help you identify how to do this.  And David is a topnotch coach, and not a bad racer too .  Digression Ended.

To get to that top level in Texas racing on around 14 hours per week of riding, we decided that my “off-season” training should be a wintry mix of tempo with bursts, over/unders, steady state, and long endurance miles.  Some sprinting is thrown in for good measure.  I would also bump my kJ/weeks up from last year around the same time.  These workouts are designed to increase my threshold by working right below, at, and right above my current threshold number.  Over/unders are definitely my favorite.  This is where you switch between a steady state (between tempo and FTP) effort and right under VO2max effort during the intervals.  This might look like:   4 min @ 75% FTP, 2 min @ 110% FTP, repeat 4 times, then rest 10 min.  Repeat process 2 more times!  To conserve time, I am doing intervals around 2/3rds of each workout, except for the long endurance workouts.  A lot of my endurance miles are on the weekends, doing at least two rides at 3.5 to 5 hours each during a weekend.  This leaves about 6 hours or less during the weekdays commuting to and from work.

So far, I think I am doing well.  I am definitely doing more kJ’s/week, which you can see below.  By the way, kJ’s/week is what I use to gauge volume instead of distance, duration, or TSS/week.  More on that in a later post.

If you compare the amount of kJ's I'm doing now VS the same time last year, it is noticeably higher. This will help me to have the endurance for the longer P12 road races

I can’t wait for February to start racing again….