It's been a few weeks since I last posted that doesn't mean however that I haven't been riding. Far from it, albeit I've scaled back a little in the on the bike training and I've been supplementing it with other forms of workouts. I've started to throw in some running in place of a morning or evening ride. Nothing too far, I started out small, 1 mile and I'm up to 2.5 miles. At the pace I'm running I'm not overdoing anything, the last thing I want to do is get a running injury that will keep me off the bike. My mile splits are almost identical, with the 2nd mile usually faster. I guess if I go any slower it would be walking, not sure. In 2010 I plan on doing 1 Triathlon, it will probably be the Rookie Tri. I doubt I'll do more than 1, but I'll do one just so I can say I've done one. I just don't have the time to train for 3 sports. I like concentrating on only 1 and perfecting it as best I can. For now throwing in some running doesn't seem to bad. Lucky for me my wife is a swim coach and not only swam in school but ran track so she can help with those disciplines. I've also been lifting weights, about once a week and doing the slideboard (That's Zeb demonstrating).
As for on the bike workouts I've been doing primarily sweet spot training (SST). These intervals are at around 90% of threshold wattage. I've been doing 2 x 20s, 1x30 or 1x60 training efforts. SST is the training zone between level 3 and level 4, the sweet spot if you will. After the 1x30 I then like to follow it up with a run, I believe the triathletes call this a brick. It's these types of workouts that will compose my winter training schedule.
Speaking of winter I believe there's a correlation between how much cold I can handle to my body fat percentage. For every percent of body fat I lose I also lose 2-5 degrees of tolerable temperature. Last winter I occasionally wore arm warmers and on days it was below 35 leg warmers. The year before that I didn't even own arm warmers or leg warmers. This year if it's 40 degrees I'm in at least arm warmers. With each percent of body fat I lose it's taking off a layer of toughness to tolerate the cold.
How's everybody else's winter training going?
