The rest week is over, and my first races of the season have come and gone. It was 'cross racing, so you know two things took place, fun and pain. Check montanacyclocross.com and the GAS website for race reports. I started strong and raced with or near the leaders for about the first half of both races, then faded back as the races went on. I think I finished in 8th on Saturday night, and 5th on Sunday. The course on Sunday suited me much better, as I think I lost a ton of time Friday night on the descents. With the training I have been doing, that is just about exactly how I expected my first races to go. I have spent the last month trying to raise my threshold power, but have spent very little time above that power. One of the key components to any training plan is specificity. That is, you have to train specifically for the type of event in which you will be competing in. Cyclocross racing demands much time above threshold in the form of short, hard bursts of power, a little recovery, then repeat again and again and again. Now that I have put some time into building that threshold power, I can now start doing some of the shorter, harder interval work that will help me be able to repeat those hard efforts. I will still spend some time working on my threshold, but the majority of my hard training time will be in the form of short hard intervals with little recovery between efforts. These training session will be hard, and they will hurt. I see lots of pain in my near future. Hopefully, the pain will be worth it, and the races themselves won't hurt quit as bad as they did this weekend. Well, that's not true. The races are always gonna hurt pretty bad. The hope is that while it's hurting that bad, I'll at least be closer to the front of the race. So, three more hard weeks coming up. Follow along and I'll try and explain some of the interval type work that I recommend for 'cross racing, just remember, you gotta like the pain!
Keep it PURE,
Brad
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