No Substitute

Do you like my new toy? I sold my old road bike a few weeks ago and finally pulled the trigger on this one yesterday. I shopped for a solid six months before deciding exactly what I wanted.

My cycling ability just isn’t where I want it to be. The only way I’ll achieve my goals is to spend some serious, consistent, painful time in the saddle. As Thomas Edison said, “There’s no substitute for hard work.” It was a chore to get on a bike I didn’t really like. This one’s calling out, “Ride me!”

Five weeks into my off-season training program and a couple things have become clear:

· My days of pure anaerobic training are over. I attempted a 10k run test last weekend and managed to induce atrial fibrillation less than one mile into the race. I’ll have to establish pacing goals based on sub-threshold testing - and I might as well forget about my target sprint race in late May.
· I can govern heart rate and still lay down some serious work sessions on the bike. My 1:40 Saturday interval session left me completely shelled.

Though behind schedule, I have to believe I’ll attain my cycling fitness goal - 4.0 watts/kg functional threshold - by September. I’ve been able to add cycling training load pretty quickly, from a 144 total TSS* in week one to a 241 total TSS in week five. I’ve accumulated these points through a series of three trainer rides per week, which vary in time from 40-minutes to 1:40.

With daylight savings time in effect, I’m looking forward to grabbing some early evening training doses as the weather warms up.

*TSS = Training Stress Score. A single number used by power junkies to help quantify overall training load, taking into account intensity and duration of each training session.