Week #3: A Real Mountain Bike Ride in January

Last week I really began to feel my training load after finally getting back on a solid schedule a couple of weeks ago. Tuesday was a planned day off, and I felt the appropriate amount of tired going into it. I struggled a bit Wednesday and Thursday, but managed to get through everything as planned. Friday I felt like I was coming down with something and ended up working from home all day and skipping my planned weight training.

Saturday I was feeling most back to normal, which was especially fortunate, as it presented a rare opportunity for a real mountain bike ride in January. This winter hasn’t quite been on par with last year’s strong El Nino, but the snow accumulation has still been pretty light. A week of 40’s and 50’s plus rain cleaned off everything that had been sitting, and Saturday promised 50 degrees and no rain, even if it was still damp and foggy.

This definitely does not look like winter.

My Camber was out of commission since I hadn’t been expecting to need it for a while and had the shock sent out for service, so it was it was little difficult negotiating the slippery rocks of Cooper’s Gap on my hardtail with not-so-grippy tires. I even struggled on Beautiful trail, which I had pretty dialed on my hardtail last summer preparing for the Wilderness 101. It’s amazing what six months away and some moisture can do to one’s skills. Regardless, it was still really awesome to get to actually mountain bike this time of year instead of just gravel grinding or doing laps of Accuweather on my fat bike, which has been the bulk of my weekend riding lately.

I was also pretty happy that, since I switched my long day and my interval day due to weather this weekend, I was still able to bang out an interval session on the rollers Sunday morning. Normally intervals the morning after a 3-hour mountain bike ride would be nearly impossible for me, but I handled it pretty well. I know part of it is that I am finally capable of doing chill long rides in Rothrock without completely destroying my legs, but I’m also hoping that it’s evidence that my ability to recovery between workouts is improving. I definitely feel like I’m managing a bigger workload overall than I was last winter, and I’ll need every bit of it come May.

I know that wasn’t the most exciting recap of the past week, but that is the essence of winter training. You just have to keep doing the thing now for the payoff later. So I did my thing, I blogged my thing, and now we’re one week closer to spring.