This weekend, while Ryan was racing the Smith and Nephew Omnium in town, I took to the road for some solo training time. Honestly, after hearing Saturday race reports from my former M&B teammates, I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to be NOT road racing. I am, however, happy to be heading to Nashville next weekend for the 50 Miles of Hamilton Creek. Being a smaller, local race, I’m more just rolling it into my normal training schedule in lieu of the usual interval/endurance rides.

This weekend, though I didn’t race, was actually quite the learning experience. Well, Saturday was just a reminder…  I went out for 2×20 intervals. At the beginning of the 1st one, I was feeling amazing, and had to keep reminding myself to back off so I could maintain the same pace for the entire 20 minutes. As most good 20 minute intervals go, the pace went from feeling easy(ish) to being pretty damn hard for the last few minutes. Ok, maybe a little too hard.

I spun for 10 minutes before my 2nd interval, hit the lap button on the Garmin, and ramped the wattage back up. Err… at least for a minute or two. Within the first five minutes, I realized I’d torched my legs, and ended up with a 20 minute average power that was less “zone 4” and more “exuberant zone 3.” Oops. Guess I need a little more practice on that one…

Sunday’s ride was equally as eye-opening. I’ve started using my geared MTB for my steady endurance rides, so I headed out for 3.5 hours of steady riding on the road. I realized over the course of that 3.5 hours that I’m horribly inefficient when it comes to riding my MTB in that manner. My pedal stroke is not very smooth, and my power output is surprisingly lower. I’m guessing this is a big part of why I’ve been experiencing cramps and unusually high levels of fatigue when racing geared.

And yes, peanut gallery- the fit of this bike is nearly identical to my road bike. I’ve taken many measurements and done lots of tweaking in order to duplicate it.

While my training experiences over the weekend have left me tired and sore, it’s always encouraging to discover specific weaknesses like I did in the last two days. I learned this from Saturday morning GI Joe cartoons…