All ready behind schedule

At the Cascade Bike Club website, they list a suggested training schedule to get ready for STP. It’s now the week of 3/7 – 3/14 and I’m not getting any mid-week riding in at all. This weekend plans to be busy with the family as well so I’m not sure if I’ll get in any mileage then either.

My fall back right now is to make sure I get in 3 or 4 days of Indoor Cycling done. This week I managed Mon / Wed and Fri. I wrote about the Monday session below. For Wed and Friday I had my favorite instructor, Ganelle, and got some very effective sessions in.

On Wed we did what she calls ‘muscle tension’ drills in addition to an all out climbing session. Aside from the few minutes of warm-up and stretching at the end, we were on a ‘hill’ for the full hour. It was tough, but the killer was those ‘muscle tension’ drills. Here’s how they work…..in the saddle cruising along doing a seated climb….probably 65 to 75 RPM….. crank on the resistance to force yourself out of the saddle and maintain that same cadence while standing….. (now here’s the killer)…after two minutes of out of the saddle climbing…..sit down but DON’T touch the resistance……. Continue at that resistance for at least 30 seconds. This doesn’t sound hard as I write it, but it is a killer on the legs. We did four cycles of this on the way up the hill then did more on the way down.

I ended the Wed class with a ‘long’ out of seat climb (5 minutes) that kept my heart-rate right at 175bpm. This is typically well into my ‘oh my god I’m going to collapse’ threshold but for whatever reason on Wednesday I was able to hold onto for that long just fine.

Today (Friday) we did ‘tempo riding’. This is where for the whole class we try to stay right at or just beyond the maximum effort level, as in when doing a time-trial ride. Started out on the foothills (Ganelle doesn’t believe in flat roads at all) and every 10 or 15 minutes we would add some resistance. There was never any recovery time. I kept my heart-rate between 165 and 170 for almost the entire class. She pushed in the last five minutes and I got well into the 170’s.

I really enjoyed the Tempo Riding. It mirrors a lot of how I’ve been riding outdoors. When I’ve
been cruising along the Sammamish Trail / Burke Gilman Trail I find myself in a rhythm, at around 160~rpm and just go, go, go. Hopefully these classes will help make up for not getting out on the bike this week.