Thursday, September 06, 2007

Stony Preride

"Train hard, rest harder."


I pre-rode the Stony racecourse last night. It was a typical Stony course, although some of the normal sections are out. It's a good "mountain bikers" course; the guys who are fast through the singletrack will do well... unfortunately, that's not me.


It was about 90F when I started my ride last night. I had planned to do 2.5 hours, but I cut it down to 1.5 hours. I was still feeling the effects of the 'cross workout the night before, and I usually don't do a very good job of "taking it easy" on the trail (that was my plan for last night). I get thinking about wanting to carry more speed through corners, and then I end up pedaling hard between the corners.


So, after an hour and a half, I was pretty fatigued and called it a night. I'm really dragging today, despite getting a full 8 hours of sleep. My plan calls for me to do another hard ride tonight, but I think I may bag it completely. I can tell that I'm right on the edge in terms of fatigue, and if I push a little harder, I'll go over and wind up sick. I don't need to be doing that. I think instead I will take a nap, maybe clean my bikes (they pretty much all need it!), and go to bed early.


I stumbled across a blog from another Michigan racer yesterday. He's a Sport racer in the next age group up from me, and he's also following the Friel plan. The difference is that he's actually using the "Mountain Biker's Training Bible" instead of the normal (road) book that I'm using. There's enough info on his blog that I can figure out a lot of the differences between the two plans. From what I can see, there are some different workouts, and, more significantly, more intensity included earlier in the year. There's enough here that I decided to go ahead and order a copy of the book (used copies on Amazon run about $9, including shipping!).

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