Cycling Better

We’ve all said this or felt this or heard someone else say it. I have no time to train! Sometimes this can be true. Let’s face it, we all have lives outside of just training and working out. There are not many people in the this world who get paid to train and race for a living and even those that do have to many times find other forms of income to survive. Money can’t buy happiness but I sure would allow me more time to train and that would make me happy…. But I digress.

Time to train can be tough to find in today’s go, go, go world. With work and family commitments not to mention some semblance of a social life, food, and OH don’t forget that one little thing called sleep. Some days there just doesn’t feel like there is any time to get a workout in.

I felt this way yesterday – It was cold outside in the morning and I wimped out on getting the workout in early, then my work day started and off I went. Making calls, returning calls, send and receiving emails – you know the typical work day for most I imagine. But then it started to creep in on me. I missed my workout. Oh, the guilt – the worry. Am I going to lose my edge? Haha. Then I started feeling really good and wanted to get something in – I had no time I kept telling myself. I have calls scheduled throughout the day and here is only a one hour break in there…. That’s not enough time for a workout, what with changing, getting set-up and then putting everything away and getting food after.

This is when I tell everyone that I am one of the lucky people who gets to work at home a couple of days a week. This allows me more freedom than most people who try to squeeze things in. So during one of my calls I placed myself on mute and went and changed my clothes into my cycling kit, filled my water bottle (this is important to be on mute for or else it sounds like you’re going to the bathroom-not good for clients to hear) and started to prep the bike. Once my call ended (late of course) I had 55 minutes until my next call. I immediately jumped on the bike (rollers) and set off on a hard intervals session. 8 minutes of ramped up warm up and then into the faux meat (I am vegan afterall) – 60 second intervals at 105% of FTP with a 60 second recovery in-between. As I neared the very end of my 30 minute session I did an all-out 60 second interval to see how close I could come to my all-time best. I’m pretty happy to say I was within 10 watts for my best 60 second sustained power output – and it’s only January 4^th. This is my best EVER – even after years of training and doing testing on myself and all the heated group rides and races I was only 10 watts away from my best.

How can this be? I haven’t have a ride on the bike longer than 90 minutes in the past 5 months. All I can say is intervals, intervals, intervals. These things make you faster. Short ones, long ones, increasing, decreasing it doesn’t matter they all work as long as you are pushing yourself during them. So when you have time or when you have no time get on the bike and blast away. The short fast work we do now will help us once the days get warmer and we decide to venture outside once again. Don’t just ride along aimlessly – make the time count!!

Ride safe my friends