Fitness Level and Mountainview Ocup

I decided to skip racing last weekend on account of being on the go for the last two months. Its been pretty busy with a new job, new home, high volumes of training, and lots of time on the road driving to races. I felt a little overtrained, and my urge to race was not there. It made sense to take a weekend off.

I did manage to put in some ride time, spending three hours on saturday riding at Twin Ponds, which is a good blend of semi-technical up and down trail, and enough climbing to keep your HR up. The main focus was trail technique. In expert, my trail ability was good enough that it wasnt quite the limiter. In elite, it seems im well off the ability of the faster guys.

Sunday was spent enjoying summer, tossing a frisbee around and not sitting on a bike.

Monday, I was back at it again, doing an LT time trial to see where I stood in terms of fitness. My threshold numbers were good, similar to where they were before I started feeling tired.

Tuesday was an easy ride with some core work.

Today, I jumped back into some Anaerobic intervals and was quite pleased with the numbers my powertap was spitting out. Of the 10, 45s intervals I did, the wattages were about 30 watts higher than the last time I had done them.

Overall, Im feeling much better and much more limber than I've felt in awhile. Ive had late shifts in the past week, which meant that I got 8+ hours of sleep each night, and I havent been doing too much intensity on back to back days.

I have tried to get my blood test results back, but each time I was greeted with a long line up to get to the doctor. Say what you want about Canada's free health care being great, but there's certainly plenty of room for improvement. (cough. cough. Two tier system)


Mountainview.


The fourth Ontario Cup race is this weekend. Its weird to think that the season is halfway over at this point.

The course is what I consider to be the hardest of the year. Its steep, lots of anaerobic climbing, no threshold climbing (my preference) and you have to know how to handle a bike well. Theres some off camber fast stuff, some loose switchbacks with roots, and a few little boulders and obstacles that are not forgiving if you're sloppy.

This is not a course that favors my strengths, and it fully emphasizes my weaknesses. This course does have a history of cracking riders on the last lap. So my gameplan is to ride smoothly and try to hold back the fatigue on the last laps with the hopes of being able to nip some of the riders who crack on the last lap.

Ive got my preride planned for Saturday and then Ill be staying at a friends place near Midland. Ill take some pictures during the pre ride to give you guys an idea of what this course is like.