back to training

Race reports are done, at least for the foreseeable future. I still haven’t quite figured out how they come to this race schedule, with more than half the OCups done before mid-June, and the rest all kind of dragged out until the end of August. Meh – more potentially gorgeous, sunny Summer days for riding!

The last little bit of riding and racing was wearing me down, and essentially bought me a week of rest. Lots of days off riding. A massage. A few easy rides. All done, and all really good. It reminded me of the taper I got to do in 2004, in advance of the last race of my triathlete nerd days. (Training for a half ironman (2km swim, 90km bike, 21km run) was a lot of work, but nothing will ever beat how rested I was and how well I slept for that two week taper. Effin’ glorious)

Last night, ready to move on and get back to riding, I attempted to fill in a month-worth of as-yet-unrecorded workout details (thankfully, where my mind is failing, my heart rate monitor can tell me whether I worked hard or not), then sat down and planned this week’s workouts (something I have not done in about a month). The planning part kind of fell aside, not because I ceased training or preparing for workouts, but more because when it’s a block of weekend races, I find I do better to stick to some general guidelines (time to recover, a workout to keep the skills sharp, a workout to keep the fitness sharp, pre-ride, race… repeat as necessary) rather than adhering strictly to something planned before I know how I really feel. I’m not sure if I’d see more “success” if I were more rigid, but I would probably just end up overextending myself or hating cycling or something like that. And honestly, these days I’m having enough trouble keeping my head in the game on the whole “*racing*” thing and not getting expectations/pressures out of whack, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go there!