Pre-feast ride

I had no real plan for this ride other than to just get in two hours. I was a little tired from going hard yesterday, but with today being Thanksgiving and all, I wanted to get out and work up an appetite. Mission accomplished. I was able to consume copious quantities of turkey, dressing, mac & cheese and rolls. Then I still managed to eat dessert.

Solo Tempo Ride

I had Wednesday off from work, so I ventured out on the road bike. I pushed pretty hard and felt like a got in a great workout in less than two hours.

Three mornings of SST

After a couple of rest days following the mtb race, I did three consecutive mornings of hard tempo, otherwise known as SST. It sounds boring, but I kept the workouts short, with the longest being 58 minutes. As an experiment, on Thursday I did no warm-up or cool-down. I simply rode the whole 50 minutes at about 90% of threshold. It wasn't too bad. That day I also lifted weights at lunch, and this morning I felt sluggish.

I've already decided that SST would be my bread and butter workout for the offseason, but a comment posted on a forum recently by power training guru Andy Coggan reinforced my belief in SST. Coggan recently said, "In terms of riding indoors, though, I believe that *every* workout that isn't a recovery ride or some form of structured intervals should be in the "sweet spot"."

Tomorrow I plan to actually get outdoors and ride some, assuming that temperatures rise well above the forecast low of 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

MTB Race

I did the mountain bike race at Harbison Forest this afternoon and finished 2nd in the expert class. It was a low key event since most competitors were locals and its the off season right now. About 10 of us lined up and I was the lone singlespeeder. I paced myself pretty well and rode a good second half of the race to move up from 5th to 2nd, but the leader (Justin from Charleston) was way out in front and I never saw him. The SS worked pretty well on this course. I couldn't keep up on some of the flat pedaling sections but the bike was fine on climbs and everywhere else.

I've been using this race is motivation to hold onto some sort of fitness over the last several weeks. Now I can slack off a little more.

Weekday Morning SST

I'm not riding everyday now, but when I do ride I'm trying to get the maximum training effect that I can get in a short period of time. On Tuesday I did this 48 minute SST(sweet spot training) effort on the trainer, with a total on bike time of 58 minutes including warm-up and cool-down. At this intensity level its hard, but not too hard.

On Monday and Wednesday, I skipped riding and lifted weights on my lunch hour.

Columbia-Roubaix Ride and More MTB

On Saturday morning I took part in a long group ride with a twist. MM put together a route that started in the Fort and headed south to Eastover, then west to Hopkins, while hitting at least a dozen different dirt sections. It was a blast bombing down unfamiliar dirt roads at 20-25mph. On the pavement we mostly just cruised along and an easy pace. The pace picked up a bit after LL, Justin and I broke off in Hopkins to head back to the NE. We just rode steady tempo, but I was still exhausted by the end. Lots of tss points were earned for an off season ride (166).

Sunday I rode the SS 29er at Harbison, which was also a blast. The 32x17 gearing made things tough riding Spiderwoman, but that gear is great overall for this place. There's an mtb race there in a couple of weeks and I think I'm gonna race. I'm still in OK shape so why not?