February Recap

Morning weigh-in: 187# (not good)

 

Today starts the first rest week in my training program, so I thought I'd do a quick recap of where things stand:

 

Week        Workouts    Hours     Distance   Calories

1/23-1/29         4           5:02         52.0         3413

1/30-2/05         3           4:30         53.1         3412

2/06-2/12         4           8:14         81.6         6645

2/13-2/19         4           7:34         78.0         5531

 

(There are four weeks in there instead of three, because I started my first "week" early to make up for training time lost to a business trip.)

 

Not too shabby, though I notice two things:

 

1. I seem to max out at four rides a week (my plan currently calls for 5-6 rides a week). This may be because it's not the best time of year for riding right now, with weather, daylight and other outside conditions putting a damper on my available ride time, or it be just how my schedule works out -- I have plenty of time on my days off, but not so much during the week. I suspect that both of those come into play, but at bottom it's a motivation issue. We'll see what happens as the weather gets nicer.

 

2. Right now I should be putting in my biggest weekly hours in the saddle, with lots and lots of low-intensity riding to get me ready for the tougher stuff coming (which will be shorter, harder, and need more rest days). My target is about 500 hours for the year, but if these are my "above average" weeks in terms of hours, I'm in serious trouble.

 

Well, things might not be as good as I'd want -- especially considering that this kind of training is less effective, in fact it might even be counterproductive, at lower training volumes -- but here's a look at my February stats going back a few years (to when I first started using the Garmin):

 

Year     Workouts      Hours       Distance    Calories

2009         12             13:37          127.6         8894

2010           5              6:21            88.8         6462

2011           6              6:44            54.4         3075

2012         11             20:26          212.7       15588

 

So in terms of volume, I'm pretty much on target right now to double my best distance/hours/calories from the past few years...