Still Going Strong

Well, I'm still going strong (relatively speaking), and am about half way through my 3rd week of training. I've got a pretty good routine down now. Mondays and Thursdays I do longer rides over a route that is a bit easier than my out and back (just a little bit easier though), and I do some FastPedal intervals on the flatter part of it.

On Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays I pretty much do my out and back route, though I had to change that a bit this week as they are doing paving on a section of that. The new route is again a bit easier but I can get my time in without too much loss in intensity.

My goal for this week is to put in a total of 6 hours in the saddle. The first week of training it was 5 hours, last week was 5.5, so I'm on track as far as increasing by 10% per week. Next week is a recovery week so I'll likely drop back down to 4.5-5 hours, then go back up the next week.

My plan is to only increase up to about 10 hours per week max. I don't want to go quite as whole hog on cycling as I did last year and burn out again. Ten hours per week should be plenty, especially if I add intensity rather than duration to keep the training load inching up. I don't plan on doing as many 4,5,6+ hour rides this year, focusing rather on something along the lines of 3 hours as my longest rides. Hopefully by the end of the season I'll be fast enough to do one of my longer loops from last year in that time (or a tad longer).

Time will tell.

Regards.