So ... Winter appears to be a frustrating time for training this season. I finished November strong and the first part of December was going well, then some really cold weather hit. I don't mind riding in the cold, it was the freezing fog I was more worried about and black ice on the road. Considering the end of my commute to work has some 10% + downhill grades, I didn't want to risk riding into work.
As soon as I was able to start commuting into work again, I caught the nasty flu going around and was off the bike again, and it took a while to recover enough that I started feeling good again.
In between those two issues, work has got in the way a couple of times.
In the end ... I've missed about 25 days of riding over the last 6 weeks, put on 10 pounds and am in likely the worst shape I've been in over the past 6 years.
I would have rode my trainer, but I was lazy and didn't want to change a flat tire so I could ride it. Looking at the math, if I had ridden it just 1 hour per day over those missed 25 days I could have kept 4+ of those 10 pounds off.
With all of that said ... I'm trying to keep a positive attitude about it. I had a great base leading up to the time off having ridden over 10,700 miles last year. I'm also kind of hoping this delay in training will move my traditional peak back from May into August when the championship races are ... which is really more paying attention to what I'm doing than when I take time off ... but it's part of trying to stay positive.
I was able to get a "Mini" training camp in this weekend with 177.4 miles ridden over 10 hours and 10 minutes ... Thank you 3 day weekend.
I'm also looking forward to our team training camp in March, which should help even more. It was a great time last season and it should be a lot of fun and riding again. Many of my teammates are currently training for training camp :) ... It seems we/everybody else hits it pretty hard on the climbs and nobody wants to be last up.
Hopefully with the new year I'll be able to get back on track, drop the pounds and get my FTP back on track for the TT season. I need to hit a couple of road races again this season just to get my fitness up, but I'm not sure which, if any I'll actually ride in.
The first race of the season is just 5 weeks away ... if my training is still screwed up, I may choose not to race it, but that's fairly unlikely since it's a 12 mile ITT. I should be able to deal with 28 minutes (+/- 30 seconds to a minute) of pain.
Hopefully anybody that reads this blog is having a better winter/off season than I am at this point.
