I jumped on the new bike this morning (I gotta come up with a better name soon!) and headed off on my commute. Obviously this brand new ultra-light wonderbike should have pedalled itself, but I couldn't figure out how to activate that option. Alas, I was resigned to pedal my own ass to work. At least the ass I'm pedalling is less substantial thanks to the bikes.
But, I digress, as soon as the pedals started cranking over, I was hit by the oh so familiar, yet not exactly welcome, not so fresh feeling of the legs. Yup, sure I raced Sunday, plus am sporting a softball sized bruise on one quad, but the legs definitely didn't have a whole lotta zip in them. I wasn't necessarily surprised by this fact, but it got me to thinking. When was the last time I really felt like my legs were "fresh" and ready to rock.
Strangely enough, I can't quite pin down that time. Oh sure, some days they feel decent and don't hurt as much as others, but I was having a hard time really nailing down when they felt like I would define fresh and full of energy. I'm beginning to think it may have to do with my training structure or more accurately my lack thereof. Riding 5-10 hours per week on average really isn't much in the way of training, but its what I've got. As such, I haven't bothered to put together any type of training regimen other than hit the gas and hang on as long as I can typically somewhere in a zone 4 average for the ride.
It actually felt good in somewhat of a twisted way to get my heart cranked up for this weekend's race. I kept an average of 184 for almost 90 minutes and it felt like I'd blown the cobwebs out pretty well once I got done wheezing and gasping after the finish. I'm beginning to suspect that I'm hitting that NO zone during my riding. No really hard efforts, no really easy efforts, and sitting in no man's land. This would also explain my legs never really feeling like they're ready to go. I just push them, take a day or two off, and repeat. They really never get the chance to do active recovery and never get over stressed to the point where I can feel the difference when backing down.
Anyone else sitting in the no zone, when it comes to "training"?
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2 comments:
Rick I agree with Bikesnob on training "Don't train just ride" The closest thing I do to training is riding the train bridge on dirty express. All you need is more miles, more beer, more rides, more bikes. So I just enjoy the ride.
I definitely enjoy the ride. I just like the cometitive side of riding so the training somewhat goes hand in hand as I'm not really into paying $20 to race if I'm not going to put the effort into trying to do well. I did enjoy a couple bud heavies and 3 slices of pizza after the ride so it's not like I'm entirely giving up my joy for the sake of racing ;)
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