The two main weaknesses I identified to start the year were: 1) my ability to develop power on flat sections of trail / road and 2) technical mountain biking skills, namely cornering and descending.
I feel like I'm doing the right things with regard to #1. I suppose I won't know for sure until racing starts or I do a group ride this spring, but I'm feeling much better about this. I've got my second LT field test scheduled for this Friday. It will be interesting to see what (if any) improvement I see.
In contrast, I've done very little to address issue #2. My attitude has been that I need to do more rides on the trails and/or do basic skill work in my driveway or backyard or wherever. The problem is that I haven't scheduled this stuff, thinking I'd just do it whenever I could. That has resulted in me not doing much of anything. Riding (responsibly) on the trails is difficult this time of year. If it's warm, it means the trails are likely wet and suseptible to damage. There are no issues with riding trails if they're frozen, but that also means it's pretty cold outside. Unfortunately, this thaw period lasts well through the spring.
So, I've decided that I should focus on basic skill work, to be done off the trail. After reading Ashwin's blog posting about his Better Ride experience, maybe this is the best thing to do anyway. I'm working on the detailed schedule for my next training block, which starts next Monday, and I'm incorporating some short skill sessions (maybe 15 minutes) in to most days. Even though I won't be spending a lot of time on skills in a given day, I think that I should see some improvements from consistently working on the basics.
2 comments:
Just be careful. You start practicing skills and before you know it, you'll stack it on the bike path like I did. Go figure.
Yeah, I hear those bike paths can be tricky. ;)
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