Thru Endurance We Conquer!

It's no secret that I love getting out on my mountain bike. I've posted pictures of Nick and I in all kinds of weather - snow, rain and the dark of night. We have the clothes for every condition and plenty of toys that allow us to play. And as a mountain biker, doing my workouts on singletrack emulates the conditions of my races. There's a different style of training needed for success on singletrack and as the days get darker, its harder for me to get. Darkness falls early, often just after I get off work. I've done plenty of night time workouts and it's always fun. Pure riding, focused on the bike and the effort, not the numbers. I have to turn internal and get the feeling of what the numbers mean physically. But come winter, the darkness is joined by cold. Sometimes the cold isn't bad and it's easy to want to get outside. Other times, the cold is deep and biting. Not conditions I want to get caught out in if something happens. I have the clothes, yes. But...

It's been a few years since I've done base line testing on the bike - partly because the focus was more on building tolerance to the workload. Coming from the running and triathlon background, I wasn't as strong on the bike as I needed to be for my goals so increasing threshold wasn't as important increasing my ability to handle increased workloads at threshold. I've gone from doing shorter workouts at lower power levels to longer and more intense intervals. I've also been able to stack more workouts together with less recovery. Looking at the TSS on Training Peaks has shown the trends of what I can tolerate and when I need to step it down for a recovery week. All of that work was done based on the threshold and ranges established on the last field test I did. With the improvements I've been seeing, I figured it was time to for another field test and to establish new ranges. But threshold testing isn't something to be taken lightly and when I picked up...

It's no secret that I've been working with Coach Adam and CTS for the last five years. I started out with CTS back in 2009, as a struggling Xterra triathlete who was easily distracted by other events and races. Over the past five years, I've refined my athletic focus to better mesh with my life focus. It's been quite the journey, going from self-coached to having the guidance of Coach Adam; to always wondering if I was doing enough - or too much to being able to trust that that the workouts written would get the results I wanted. I knew enough self coaching to be dangerous from my years of running - Coach Adam was able to tie it all together with the multisport and later cycling focus. Coach Adam was a restraining hand at times, others a driving force to challenge me; it was a successful relationship between athlete and coach. One that I'm lucky to have had. The last five years have been quite a ride - with unbelievable highs and lows and I've been able t...