With two months left in the season, I realize that this year isn’t turning out as I had hoped. It’s not like I’m riding like a slug, but I’m just barely reaching my all-time bests in the power department and I still haven’t had any notable results. With the quality and quantity of training I did this off-season, I should be much stronger than I am right now. So I’ve been pondering the question: Why? The only explanation I can come up with is that I tried to do too much, too soon.

Last year, my training volume was at an all-time low. Then this year, I take a sabbatical from work and crank up the volume to almost double last year’s (up to eleven!). I thought I’d be able to handle it, since in prior years I’ve ridden almost as much as I was planning. But I assumed wrong and overtraining hit in March. I backed off for a couple weeks, but then, when I started to feel better, I picked up right where I left off. That was the second mistake — I should have realized that I needed to reduce my overall training load, not just temporarily back off.

So all season long I’ve only been getting mediocre results. I also haven’t been feeling too great off the bike, which is something else I should have paid more attention to. But sometimes the signals come on so slowly that you don’t notice them until it’s too late! For the last few weeks, I’ve just been riding based on feel, not worrying about making my projected hours. Now I’m looking at the rest of the season.

Maybe I can leverage some of the criterium fitness I’ve been working on? In a couple weeks I’m going to do the Portland Twilight Criterium. The following week, Heather and I head out to Downers Grove, Illinois for the USCF Criterium National Championships. There are two races for me: the Pro-Am Cat 1/2 race Saturday night, then the Cat 2 race on Sunday morning. After that, my main focus will be the Parker Main Street Omnium in Colorado in mid-September. It’s a National Racing Calendar (NRC) event and it’ll be my last shot at one of my goals…a top ten at an NRC. Well, my goal used to be a top-3, but I’m trying to be realistic! 😉

I’ve got a plan on how to get there but first I need to recover. I’m not doing any hard efforts until my resting HR is down to where it should be. And even then, I’m going to give myself extra recovery time and hopefully, I can finish this season off on a good note.