Thursday 26 November 2009

Key Sessions

More structure is the plan for this winter. I have had two winters now since I started riding more and I definetly love my adventures but I am generally lazy and just pootle away. Then I ride with others and I am basically slow. I'll never be fast, too heavy and no natural talent, but it would be nice to be faster. As I know that I won't give up the just riding and I will always want to commute by bike a dedicated training schedule is out. I don't have the motivation to just do certain sessions, not jump on my bike and ride for 3 hours because the weather is nice or a friend wants to meet for cake. So I am going to try my own method. I am going to continue riding and come the summer going on adventures but I am going to plan some key sessions for each week. These are sessions that are more useful to me than the usual ride to work ride home in which I just pootle along. The plan is to plan four sessions a week. Two running and two biking. This week the plan is/was:

Run 1: 30mins
Run 2: 1 hour
Bike 1: Hill repeats
Bike 2: Cross race

The plan is that there will be a shorter intensity session for each running and biking and then a longer one of each. Hence they will be labelled: R, LR, B, LB. I think it is important to plan a long bike as although I do a fair amount of riding and the hours add up each week since I have been working again there are less continuous long rides. I have been recording all my days mileage as one ride. So for example a 35mile ride might actually have been 15miles in the morning , 10miles at lunch, 10miles home. I am going to split rides now, I didn't originally as I didn't want to have done loads and loads of road rides, but I think it is more honest. Or do you think I should still record as one ride?

The plan is that most of the time this long ride will probably be road and I will take a long way to/from work but once a month I will head out on a long mountain bike ride.

I'm hoping that I can get faster for kielder next year, the first race I have entered of a few events I'm hoping to do. But I really want to improve my time for this. I was really happy with now I did but I think I can go faster. Nutrition will be another thing to look at for this!

I also think I will have to publish weekly plans on the blog so people can nag me into doing the sessions!

5 comments:

  1. we'll nag each other and become champions :)

    think you're right about being more focused if you want to improve speed. you could ride forever if needed, you've got bags of endurance :)

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  2. I think another key session for me needs to be an off-road ride each week. Otherwise I end up walking everything technical when I next ride.

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  3. i've noticed that with no daylight riding by 'skills' have vanished. head games...

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  4. I've gone back to spin classes and am already noticing the difference (not that I'm exactly starting from peak fitness). I know spinning in the gym is not in the spirit of things, but during the week I find that I've only got energy for 30 and 45 min exercise bouts - I can give it some wellie and walk away feeling virtuous!

    So will you be adding intervals into your commute rides?

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  5. I'm not sure about my commuting being anything other than commuting. Think it is safer that way. When I used to ride across a country road it would have been a possibility but now not really!

    Spinning would be good, but trying to spend no money at the moment - oh and failing!

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