2nd Week of Training

I've now completed my second week of training, which for the most part has gone really well. I only managed to ride 5 days out of the 7, but made up for this on the days that I did. I've been attempting to do some targeted sessions for riding at high effort for an hour without stopping. It's not quite the stuff of Boardman and Obree, but I've found it very beneficial (if not a bit of a killer). I've also been trying to introduce a few sprints into rides (usually on hill climbs or the last stint on the way home).

In terms of mileage this week has been bang on target, as you can see in the graph above I've stepped it up nicely from last week. A lot of this has been off road as planned, but with some more intense stints on my fixed gear road bike. I find this a really useful training tool as it forces me to attack hills and discourages me from slowing down afterwards. I've also been trying to replace lazy days with low intensity days, just spinning 15miles with friends and having a laugh. My legs have felt good throughout these, and only feel sore when I see a challenge and attempt to push myself and ride flat out.

My diet has been mostly good, still wishing I could afford some whey protein, but making sure I have at least one high protein meal a day, and keeping my fruit and veg intake up. It would seem my body is attempting to get a cold, but I just haven't been giving into it, and it hasn't gotten worse at all in the two weeks I've "had" it for, so hopefully this will just pass and let me crack on.

As for targets for next week I'm not entirely sure what to set. I would like to say step up the mileage to 150+ and keep pumping more effort into training, but I realise I actually have a fair bit of work on to do for my return to Uni. I'm probably going to set cycling as a reward for getting some work done, so maybe aim to get in ~120 miles from 6 x 20 miles rides, which will probably be evening, so may end up being more on the road than off it. I've got my workout bench setup in my room now, so I'm going to try and get on that for a while every other day, this can tie-in with work / revision quite well. As an addition to my diet, I'm now cutting alcohol out until after the race. This may prove difficult with all the parties coming up. But I'll let you know how it goes next week. Until then, ride safe.

Posted in Blog by Michael Strutt on 2011-04-17 14:55:18

   

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