So now I am in week 3 and after a bit of travel and a couple of hectic weeks, I am back in Hong Kong and settled into a better routine which I should be able to keep up until the race. For me routine is key. Like most of you, especially those in my 40+ age bracket, cycling is just one of the many demands on our time. Its often a struggle to find enough time for family, work, social activity, personal admin, pets, household duties, training, recovery, Netflix…. The list goes on. A solid structured routine, helps to schedule all this in.
With all these time pressures, training can sometimes take a backseat or at least suffer as a result. Most professional cyclists are training 20-25 hours per week – it is what they do. As a business owner, 60-70hr work weeks are commonplace so at least for me, that level of training is not an option and in fact would be a detriment.
I need to find a happy medium - a fine line between being good on the bike and being an irritable prick off it. So along with routine comes balance – so my training will be anywhere from 10 – 15 hrs per week, but almost every session will be structured with limited ‘junk’ miles. So a lot of solo sessions, workouts on the trainer, generally just focused training.
The start of the week is focused on recovery, generally from a solid weekend, so light sessions, active recovery or full rest. Mid week will always be a indoor session on the Kickr with intervals, followed by a couple of two hr rides during towards the end of the week with an endurance or tempo focus, then longer rides on the weekend. These longer rides will be based around blocks of endurance but will have some specific work in them, like sprints or Vo2 efforts – trying to replicate race conditions.
As a masters athlete I feel I can handle and benefit from this training load, but recovery is at the forefront and something I don’t pay enough attention too. There is a myriad of recovery tools out there and each will have different benefits for every rider. I try to do a bit of stretching daily, especially in the hips and glutes followed by a bit of foam rolling – I will be looking to do some more n regards to recovery as I feel I neglect this area a bit. Aside from general recovery, making sure I am not gong full gas on the bike every day is key to being able to fulfill the training plan. It has taken me many years to listen to my body. Now if I am feeling not so good, or the legs are a bit tender,I am more inclined to take it easy or shut it down all together to make sure I am ok for the next training session.
Right now its time to head into the office – until next week.
