Tempo

I've been doing Tempo rides on Tuesday nights for this training block. Last night was also the first Rhino track night. I had considered going, but they were predicting bad thunderstorms so I decided to stay home and do my Tempo ride as-planned on the trainer. It turns out that I could have gone to the track, it still hadn't rained by the time I went to bed!

Anyway, I had a great ride last night. I did a short warmup, then 40 minutes at tempo, then a short cooldown. My legs felt great for all but the last 5 minutes of the tempo riding. For the past two weeks, I felt like I struggled to keep my power numbers even at the lower limit of Zone 3, but last night, I was able to stay at the upper end with reasonable comfort. It's workouts like that that give me confidence in my training plan.

Unfortunately, the weather is supposed to get pretty bad around here this week. Lots of cold days and rain (and maybe snow!). Sarah and I are heading over to Mattawan for the weekend. I'm hoping I can get some rides in anyway, but we'll see. I'll just have to break out my cold weather riding gear again.

The first mountain bike races of the year are coming up in the next few weeks. The first two are time trials, one at Pontiac Lake and the other at Yankee Springs. I was originally thinking I wouldn't do the Pontiac Lake race, it's on the last day of my Base 2 phase, but I'm starting to get anxious to race. I may treat it as a "fair weather" race: if the weather is nice and I feel good, I'll do it, if not, I won't. I'm already signed up for Yankee Springs.