Almost Training

Earlier this winter, John left a comment on one of my posts suggesting I get Chris Carmichael's book: The Time-Crunched Cyclist. John got fast last year so I figured I should at least look at this book. The premise of The Time-Crunched Cyclist is that it is better to carefully follow a high intensity, low volume (6 hours a week) plan than to partially follow a more traditional, high volume schedule. Hard to argue that. Riding more than 6 hours a week is just not feasible for me. I have been doing a half ass job following Joe Friel's book, The Cyclist's Training Bible, for the last few years. I am going to try following Carmichael's plan to the letter.

I start next week. I have been increasing my training effort these last few weeks in preparation for this. Today I took a test to establish training intensity ranges; two 8 minute all out efforts. I'm still doing this half ass, I should be using a power tap to record my watts. I'm just not that serious about training. Anyway, a flawed plan is better than no plan at all. I am going to use heart rate as my basis for intensity. I averaged 169/170 BPM for each attempt. Last year I figured my lactate threshold was around 170 so no surprises there.

OK, now that I publicly stated my plan, I'm obligated to follow it. Or go back and do some serious editing later. It will hurt either way.