The first week of March was an okay week, but it was overshadowed by rain in the first half of the week. It's actually been quite nice the last couple of days, though, and the quality of my riding has likewise improved a bit (as it always does when the weather turns for the better).
Given, I ride whether the weather is good or not, and lightning is usually the only thing that will push me indoors if I'm planning on doing a serious training session, but I still find that I can't go very hard in the cold or the wet. Doing workouts in the rain is almost always marked by feelings of an inability to go hard, because it feels like your legs never warm up and your lungs never open up fully. That being said, I guess you just do what you can.
Anyway, the training I've had in mind for the 3 or 4 weeks leading up to the Madera and San Dimas Stage Races is focused around getting a bit more time in on the TT bike (for Madera) and doing uphill efforts at above threshold paces (for San Dimas). So, to that end, I did some hard intervals at around racing effort on Thursday, following a longer ride with some flat and uphill LT work on Wednesday. Friday was an easy recovery day out with my girlfriend, and we both benefitted from having an easy 3 hours or so riding easily. The beautiful weather and good company made for an excellent day on the bike, in spite of feeling tired in the legs. Saturday was a good ride marked by easy riding with several 2-5 minute uphill efforts inserted throughout... Saturday was a reassuring ride, because the hardest series of intervals was done at about 4 hours into the ride, but they were still about as fast as they have been lately when done at hour 2 of my workouts... In any case, I think that my maximal aerobic output is probably slowly climbing, as it did last year. From there it becomes more a problem of working on lost weight, improved acceleration and better tactics that will get good results.
Along those lines, I would love it if I were 5 pounds lighter going into San Dimas, and even Madera, because the uphill time trial at San Dimas is a race that I would like to do well at. Last year I was able to maintain or increase my strength a bit through the summer, but lost 5-6 pounds during those months. I feel as though I have good overall strength, but that the extra weight loss would be helpful in that time trial. Likewise, acceleration is always something I would like to do better at, and a 3% reduction in weight would probably help that aspect of my cycling. Even though I'm at a similar weight to last year (about 163-165), I hope to slowly lose a few pounds by this summer, but will not usually fret over it, since I find that I do well by fueling hard training rather than limiting my food intake in order to lose weight. Naturally, some weight seems to come off in the warmer weather and when workouts get harder and racing picks up more. It just would have been nice to have spring come earlier, so that could happen sooner.
