Off Season.

I'm a month into my training after taking all of October off. Well not completely off since I ran a couple of times and rode my cross bike once, which consisted of me practicing wheelies for an hour (I still suck at them, it's gonna take a lot more practice). I tried to remember the last time I took 4 weeks off in my career of endurance sports, and after reviewing a couple of old training logs I couldn't find any rest period that lasted more than 3 weeks. So this was a big amount of time for my body to try and recover from all the abuse and work that I have put it through over the last 11 years. The month of inactivity was good for healing some aches, but I don't think my body responded that well too it. One of the reasons I think this, is because I got a terrible sinus infection for a good 2 weeks. I hadn't been sick before that for more than a year, and it's funny that as soon as I stop working out my immune system goes down. Although this could have had a bit too do with a long weekend of tailgating and late nights will visiting my brother at Iowa.

I spent a few weeks in October getting my training schedule set up for the coming months, and this year will definitely be the most organized, thought out, realistic and specific training plan to date in all my years of running and/or cycling. I'm also bringing back an improved weight lifting routine which I got away from last year. I think the hours in the gym now, will benefit me even more than hours on the bike. Of course nothing compares to riding, but it's now in the 30s here in Chicago, so motivation is a bit harder to get outside and ride.

I have spent a great deal of time training for improvement, with running and cycling and anything else that I have set out to accomplish. There are a number of factors that go into improving as an athlete, some you can control and others not so much. Non-controllable factors like natural talent and body development are things that you are just born with. Certain people will be naturally better than others at a given sport at different times in their life's. You can't control them, so you have to just realize them, accept, and go on from there. The factors that you can control though are things like sleep or rest and training volume and specificity. It pays to be organized in endurance sports, mapping out training and being realistic with what one is capable of doing given certain restrictions is a must. You benefit much more from training when you can be consistent and methodical about it rather than spontaneous and erratic. That's not to say training needs to be dull, far from it, but it will pay you back much more come racing season if you can train with a consistent plan, then to just 'wing it'. Plus if you keep good notes you can always come back later and tweak things for the next year. It's much more fun to continue to improve in one's sport rather than plateau or even get worse. Many times improvement can even come from not just training more, or harder, but rather differently.

Photo by Kim

I have done a couple of cross races this fall for fun, and have accepted my fate in the 3s versus last year when I was trying to race the 1/2's and getting killed. I have a much more fun time when I race the 3s anyway, so until I actually focus training for cyclocross, I am not going to set myself up for disappointment. I will be racing the Illinois championships this weekend though to try and improve my 3rd place finish in the 3s from last year. I got the hole shot then, so let's see what I can do this year, with hopefully a lot less snow.

I don't plan on writing as much this winter, because I am trying to stay ontop of everything I have going on balancing a full time job, training, friends, family and even some off the bike off season fun, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy writing and have lots of stuff going on that sometimes I just want to share.

Some links and future things to come...

• NPR coverage of California Road Rage Case
• VT article on Sharing the Road and Reid's Reaction
• Building a Moped
• Mountain Bike Shocks Rebuild
• My basement training/workshop pictures
• Finding a team
• Some how-to's
  

Also if anyone is interested in a cycling specific lifting program, let me know and I can email you the spreadsheet I created from an old template from my HS assistant cross country coach. It's an excellent tracking tool for recording progress in the gym and it's philosophy comes straight from Friel's Training Bible, with a few minor tweaks.