Saturday, May 30, 2009

My Mini Training Camp

I took this week of work off. I was the only one in my family that had the time off so I was flying solo. With no daughter or wife, my time was all my own.

I put together a plan to do a bunch of riding with a main focus on hill work. After my humbling showing at the Tour of Kensington Valley, I decided I needed to focus a bit more on my climbing.

Living in Michigan, I feel like I should put quotes around "hills" and "climbing". You'd be hard pressed to find a "hill" in SE Michigan that takes longer than 3 minutes to climb... Basically, you can power up just about any hill you come to. Still, it was an area that I had neglected since moving here from Denver, Colorado over 7 years ago. Now that was some climbing out there... Miss those mountains!

Well, my mini training camp seemed to help. I went for a 40 mile ride this AM with some buddies and I could tell that I was climbing much more comfortably. And, after 30+ miles of rolling terrain, the last 7-8 miles were spent in time trial mode, just putting the hammer down to get home as fast as I could. My main motivation for this TT was not pissing off my wife. I was supposed to be home before 10 AM so she could get to kickboxing and I was about 8 miles from home. It was about 9:25 AM when my impromptu time trial started and it was 9:45 AM when I stepped up onto my front porch, winded and dripping in sweat. I made it, and I actually felt pretty good.

Today was the first day that I actually feel like all this training is paying off.

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