BUSY WEEK, TIME TO RACE AGAIN

This last week has been a busy one for me. I'm in the middle of a big project in Big Sky for work, and with the drive back and forth every day and trying to spend a little time with the family, there is barely any time left to train. I better get used to it, since I will be working up there from now until well past the end of the CX season. Lucky me.

After my results from last weekends races, I was ready to train hard again this week and hopefully start to make some progress on my high end fitness. My ability to repeat those hard efforts for an hour is definitely my weakness right now. I had high hopes of getting in a decent ride Sunday evening after racing that morning, but life got in the way, and that was another ride missed. Monday was back to work, then coaching Mariah's soccer practice for Tawnya, as she had her first spinning gig come up that evening, which is cool. So, no ride again Monday, which wasn't to big a deal, as it was just going to be an easy spin anyways. I woke up way early Tuesday and went for a good one hour run with the dog. I did a few short hard sprints and also ran hard up the one little grass hill by my house about 10 times. I still hate running, but it's getting easier. Tueasday evening I did a trainer workout, which I call the hour of power. After a good warm up, I did 2 min at about 120% threshold power, then 2 min easy, repeat for an hour. This doesn't sound to bad, but it gets pretty hard at the end. I cooled down and did some stretching, realized it was midnight, and had to hit the sack. Another busy day Wednesday led to another evening trainer session. This time it was an hour of sweet spot with a short hard burst every five minutes, recovering only back to sweet spot power. I was feeling a little fatigued, and only lasted about 40 minutes with this one before throwing on the towel and spinning easy for the rest of the hour. Thursday night, you guessed it, another late night trainer ride. I had planned on doing some microburst efforts, but could tell right away that I was to tired for that. The long work days with little sleep, along with the couple fairly hard rides earlier in the week had caught up with me. I decided to skip the intervals and just rode tempo for about an hour and a half, then hoped onto the treadmill for a short hard run with the treadmill set on the highest incline possible. Midnight again, so no core work. I need to make sure and get more of that in next week. Friday was a scheduled rest day, and I think it was needed, even though my training hasn't been to tough this week.

That brings us up to today, where I planned on heading over to Helena for the omnium, but have decided that I have to much stuff to get done. I am skipping out today, but plan on racing the two races tomorrow. Mariah will also be making her junior cyclocross debut, hope it goes well for her. In preparation for tomorrow, I just finished an hour easy ride with about five short hard sprints and a little time on some single track to open up the legs and work on the bike handling. I feel pretty well rested and ready to roll.

Tomorrows race should be a tough one. I expect all the heavy hitters to be there, and that Helena course is tough and technical. I think I'm a little better at the running this year, so that should help on that course. I remember my back aching and feeling totally wasted after the race last year. It'll be hard from the gun, hopefully I can hang with the leaders a little longer this week. The dirt crit following the cx race is pretty cool also. I won that last year on a solo break, wonder if I can do that again?

Brad