I’ve changed up my workout routine a bit this year leading into racing season, and so far it appears to be paying off.  The first major change came from running 5-6 days a week over Christmas break since I didn’t have a bike with me.  As I mentioned in the last post, this seems to have improved my climbing ability on a bike.

Primarily to maintain the running endurance I built from running regularly for several months, I’m still running 1-2 days a week, usually for 5-6 miles at a moderate tempo.

Next up, I’m doing bodyweight workouts to build general strength.  I don’t have access to a gym, and bodyweight workouts are reputed to be a great way to build lean muscle.  I looked into some different routines and basically ended up coming up with my own.  I focus on core, legs, and some upper body with 4-5 different exercises in each of those categories and rotate through each by doing one exercise per category and then moving on to the next exercise immediately.  By the time I come back to that category, those muscles will be rested but I will have been continuously working out.  I only do one set for each exercise, but I do as many reps in each set as I possibly can before I simply can’t do more.  This strategy leads to a very fast, intense, and brutal workout that gets the heart rate way up.  After all 15-20 exercises are complete, I evaluate how I’m feeling and if I think I should work on any section more or if I’m done and then move on to stretching.  So far I’ve managed to work myself well with this routine.  I’m always sore the next day.

As far as on the bike workouts, I thought I would have a lot less base than I do since I haven’t been back on my bike that long, but apparently an hour long run translates into 4 hours on a bike pretty nicely.  My endurance has surpassed my own expectations by far.  Still, I’m trying to get in at least one long ride per week (60+ miles).

The rest of my time on the bike consists of ramping up intensity slowly.  It’s still early in the season, but I do have a stage race in a week that I want to do well at.  I usually get in one good ride of hill repeats (exactly what it sounds like – go up a hill, go back down, then go right back up again a bunch of times in a row) per week.  I’m starting to add high intensity intervals in order to increase my ability to recover in races.  Intervals are always the most painful workouts, but result in some of the most noticable benefits.  Finally, I’m doing some long tempo rides in order to increase my time trialing strength.  Ususally I’ll throw my aero bars on the bike and go out for an hour or so at a pace that’s just under my anaerobic threshhold.  I need to get in another one or two of these rides before next weekend.

So that’s about it.

In a typical week, 1 run, 1 bodyweight workout (ususally same day as run or a shorter ride), 1 endurance ride, 1 hill repeats, 1 tempo ride, and one set of intervals.  Oh, and on race weeks I’ll cut out one of the high intensity rides in favor of racing.

After a rest day yesterday and intervals today, I plan to do two more hard days of riding this weekend, then take it easy next week leading up to the stage race to be as fresh as possible.