Training Update: Hills, Cold, Long Rides, Cross Training, and Power Test

Since my last post I have done a lot of training.  I have fallen slightly away from the amount of time I have scheduled myself to train in my training plan, but the training I have done has been high quality. The week between Christmas and New Years I was in Jefferson, MD riding the hills.  It was a great chance to test the Madone on the rolling, steep hills plus work on my leg strength. 

Last weekend I did a three hour ride with a couple of teammates. That was huge for me.  It has been at least three years since I was able to ride that far with no back pain. I followed it up an endurance cross training workout on Sunday.  It wen something like this:

8:00 with 2:00 rest interval.  3x on the Concept2 rower, 3x on the Versa Climber, 3x on the Jacob's Ladder, and 3x with a sled push.

It was very tough but a great accomplishment when I was done. 

This week was a recovery week through Thursday. On Friday I did an 8-minute power test.  I use the 8-min version during the base building months simply because I can wrap my mind around it better.  It still ends up being nearly a two hour ride because of where I ride to perform the test.  Basically I do two 8-minute efforts with a 10-minute rest interval. I average the two results and use 90% of the value. My FTP increased by 5 watts since last month and 20 watts from the month before.

Saturday was another cross training day for me in which I did the following:

5:00 on the Versa Climber, 20x push-ups, 10x pull-ups, 20x sit-ups, 10x Squats (35lb KB), 20x lunges (walking 10 each side), 10x KB swings (35lb), 20x Smartbell circles (10 each side).  I repeated this circuit five times with only taking breaks to drink water (there was one time I ended up taking a little break because of a conversation).

This really was a tougher training session than it may sound.  It hit all the critical movement patterns in sports (push, pull, squat, bend, lunge, and rotation).  It was also metabolic training by doing the Versa Climber first, all the strength work was accomplished with a high heart rate.  It was just over an hour of solid training but really was an endurance workout.

Today I went out for just over two hours with my teammate Mike.  We did a northern VA Beach ride which included several stops, starts, turns, wind changes, and conversation.  Sometimes I feel these types of rides hurt more than a steady fast county ride.

Also I finally got a K-edge.  I bought the one that holds the Garmin on top and GoPro under.  Here a two pics from today's ride including a selfie:

Thanks for reading and hopefully you get some good outdoor training prior to the big storms rolling through this week.