Classic Dirt Geeks

So I was riding on the trainer yesterday, finishing up a threshold interval approaching the second hour, thinking "Jesus God I really don't want to ride the trainer anymore." Traineridings (more on this in a bit) on the weekend suck. It's fine during the week, maybe it's even better since how much time do you have to throw at this thing anyway, and the trainer on and off in 90' you can slaughter yourself so you don't need anymore. But on the weekend you want to go a little longer and you don't want to do it inside. But neither do you want to ride in a hurricane, as many people did yesterday. Pick your poison. Inside was mine.

Before the trainer, we watched Omloop on the livefeed. That was a pretty good race. BMC pretty well sucked up the joint, but Vanmarcke sure was a stud. Brilliant riding to put that dig in to get rid of the Sky and Quick Step dudes to bring it to par with Boonen and Flecha. Anyone's money had to be on Boonen, but that's why they actually have to have the horse race - you've got to see who wins. Boonen said he went from long because there were two tough turns at the end and thought it would be tough to pass late, but maybe he knew Vanmarcke had that goods in the sprint? Kuurne was boring. I've tried, and failed - I hate the Cav act. Bernie Eisel should be a millionaire. He probably is, though. Good for him.

I've been geeking out a little bit on the trainingsprogråm lately, keeping track of TSS. No big revelations as yet. Training's hard, and it takes time. N'est-ce pas? We knew this.

A few laps around the track at Fountainhead today. Place is great. Had the tires a bit firm but was going pretty well. The telltale sign of when you're starting to get in shape is when you just don't ever have to slow down that much. To start with, you go pretty slow all the time. That's the first phase. The next phase is that you go pretty fast some of the time. Then you start to go pretty fast some of the time and sort of fast some of the time but slow some of the time. Then it's pretty fast a lot of the time and slow never. I haven't ever yet gotten to the point where you go really fast a lot and pretty fast the rest of the time, much less really fast all of the time. This is how the divisions in cross racing go. The top of elites goes really fast all the time, as you go down in the elites the guys further down go really fast a lot but only pretty fast some times. The top of the B race goes really fast a lot and then sort of fast a bunch. As you go down in the B race, they go fast sometimes, sort of fast sometimes, and spend some time recovering. I'm now on a ladder rung where the rider against whom I judge myself, who hasn't been able to get optimal training time in lately, is within reach where that matters and I'm able to keep a lid on his superiority on the "go fast and make lots of turns" and also the "go slowly and make lots of turns" parts. It used to be that he'd beat me up bad when I was in shape and he wasn't, and would brain me when we were both in or out of shape. He in shape and me not would see me hyperventilating in a paper bag. Not good.

A hard work of radspørtraining and then a recovery week and another test. I heart tests.

German phrasing is where we're going this year. It's pretty hip. You'll see.