The biggest aspect I'm lacking right now, is the anaerobic power. I learned this the hard way last week when I realized my so called 'matchbook' only had 2 or 3 matches in it. I put out a few hard 1-2 minute efforts and was pretty much toasted afterwards. You can argue that it was very early season, but I can assure you that there should definitely have been more in the gas tank.
I've set out a four week block of VO2 max training, in an effort to get some of that anaerobic power. These efforts are important for launching an attack on a hill, bridging a gap, or just laying down some heat on the race course.
The workouts I'll be doing will be structured as follows. 20 minute warmup, 5mins@ threshold, 5 minutes easy, then a series of 3 minute VO2 max efforts with 3 minutes rest in between. The goal is to do 6 of these intervals. So far ive logged in three of these workouts which have been painful to say the least.
Due to the weather, I'm still doing my workouts indoors at Goodlife. I'm pretty sure im one of the more entertaining characters to watch at the gym. While all the underarmour clad dudes and dudettes are doing their usual posing in front of the mirror, or discussing how much creatine they need, or inevitably skipping leg day. I'm strutting around in bib shorts and a Harvest Festival tshirt and bypassing most of the equipment to use the one or two neglected spin bikes. Then the intervals happen. Since i'm doing 3 minute VO2 max intervals, it's pretty much 2 minutes and 48 seconds of me breathing extremely heavy, sweating literal pools, and whimpering in pain, much to the dismay of the person beside me who's riding the other spin bike with the seat way too low, doing some sort of Jillian Michaels approved workout.
Anyways, I have a month more of these intervals ahead of me. After this, the idea is to have a couple more matches in the matchbook, and not a crumpling heap after a few hard attacks and pulls. So far I feel quick, but not race quick.
I don't have any races on the schedule, due to the nature of my job, but tuesday group rides and the smaller races look like a definite possibility.
Because I hate blog posts that are just a wall of text.. and this one comes close. Here's some random irony. Check out his tshirt.
