Cycling Season Five

Not that I think anyone ever actually looks at this but I am still blogging. I love the end of the season. It is a nice time to slow down and as my friend Bob likes to say "get your head up off the bars and look around a bit." My favorite thing about the off season is that there is plenty of time to get in some fun trial rides on the MTB. In fact it has become sort of a regular part of my training to switch over to the mountian bike in the winter months. It is not exactly cross training but it does feel sufficiently different enough that when the spring rolls around I have renewed enthusiasm for training on the roadbike.

For me it is always the same. By the end of the season I convince myself that this is the last year that I am going to be so serious and regimented about training and next year I am going to take it easy. Then, when the spring rolls around I am already planning all the events I am going to do and what training will be necessary.

This season I am looking forward to the Big Epic One day events like the Assault on Mt. Mitchel and the Bridge to Bridge. Last season I planned to do all of the ones that were local. There were 6 on the calender ranging in mil age from 75 to 109. I ended up doing two and a half. It is pretty funny thinking back on it. There were a lot of excuses. Money was a big issue last year. Gas and hotel rooms are not cheep. A relatively new relationship put a serious strain on the amount of hours I had to train (even though I logged over 4500 miles by mid summer!) It's always hard to balance training with family and work commitments.

So this season I am thinking of picking 3-4 evenly spaced events and trying to train for each of them. This season (like most others) I put on a little weight in the winter months. 10 pounds to be exact. Not a lot to loose but it will take some effort. And I would like to loose about 15 on top of that. So the plan is loose the weight in the early months doing long slow rides, watching the calorie intake, and then use March to get strong.

I am aiming to do the Assault on the Carolina's in early spring, The Three Mountain Maddness in midspring, The Assault on Mt Mitchel in midsummer, and the Bridge to Bridge in the Fall. This should give me some nice goals to motivate me to train and keep me interested in my fifth season of road biking.