Spring Training 2012



From last winter but you get the idea

Like a bear coming out of hibernation its time to start thinking about bike racing again.  I don’t think you ever stop thinking about racing but after almost six months of training and racing by last September I was toast and in much need of a break.  Lots of riders use this time of year to race Cyclocross and I was hopeful this would have been my first year but I just couldn’t find the motivation and ended up taking it easy through the fall.  After an enjoyable holiday vacation and honeymoon in January I was well on my way to piecing together a training plan for 2012.

A training plan is very important for racing because it’s basically the roadmap to get you from fat in January to fit in July.  Well not fat exactly… but you know what I mean.  As with anything that takes planning the first thing you have to do is establish your goals.  Ok, so what ARE my goals for 2012?  HMMMM.  Go out and win every race.  Ok, that’s a good one… but not very realistic.  Just getting on a podium in a race can make an entire season.  So let’s say:

1)       Podium at least one Cat 3 race

It would also be nice to make some progress towards a Cat 2 upgrade.  So how about:

2)      Achieve 5 Cat 2 upgrade points

That seems like a good start but with the new USA Cycling ranking system this year it would be nice to be considered one of the top racers in the state of IL.  So how about:

3)      Be Ranked in the top 20 in the State of IL.

Screenshot of my 2012 training plan

Awesome now we have 3 goals for 2012… now how do we get there?  Achieving those goals is going to take a lot of dedication, commitment and a ton of miles.  When training its better to look at hours rather than miles because miles can be deceiving.  When you’re riding into a 20+ mph headwind on a 40lb. bike what would take 40 minutes in the summer might take over an hour in January.  So we set a goal of yearly hours.  For me this year the goal will be around 400.  Now we need to break that down into hours per week. 

There’s lots of scientific strategery that goes into this part of the plan which I will skip now, but in short by planning to “peak” at different times of the year we can build up the hours weekly so as not to put too much strain on the body early on and build a solid base of miles early in the year.  Reducing the miles as the summer progresses and focusing on intensity more than quantity.

And that’s basically how I put together my yearly training plan.  As of now I’m finishing up my second block of base miles which started back in January.  What do January base miles look like in Chicago?  Well here are a couple examples…

But it hasn’t been all bad, the winter has been mild and temperatures around 30 are tolerable.  It’s about this time of year that the race dates start getting finalized for the year which gets me really excited.  This time of year can be hard because of the cold, dark, and long riding days.  And when racing couldn’t seem any farther off… but now finally a little glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.  The first races are getting finalized for March and April.  More on this year’s race schedule later.