My 2020 Cycling Tale
Ambition, motivation, and rolling with what’s going
Let’s rewind about a year. I was getting psyched for my 2020 cycling season. Aiming for some gravel racing, some road stuff, and generally beating up on the local fast guys.
I wrote a series of blogs to get amped. I trained myself into race shape by March. I got registered for the spring events and was ready to rip it up.
Then…
Wahh! 😭
Working from home, kid out of daycare March-July, all travel canceled, no group rides, my wife was pregnant with our second, on and on. I know, tiny violins right? Well, read on to hear how I rolled with it, made the best of it, and had an ok summer.
Before “the changes”, I was riding 12–15 hours a week preparing for 5+ hour races. I was about to go to train in Hong Kong on a work trip before getting into Spring races.
POOF!
When we went on lock down and all the targets literally disappeared, there was a lot of soul searching. I had to take a step back and ask myself — what motivates you now that all those things that have been motivators are no more?
At first, I was able to get motivation from the fact that I had built fitness. It was just what I was doing — training, enjoying the spring, getting fast. But that only went so far. Burn out set in and I had to find something else.
Rolling with it
So I just started challenging myself. Said the hell with getting fast and started pushing the endurance out. I think I did four 150 mile days. I did a few overnights with almost 200 miles in two days.
At the end of that period of long rides, I was fit enough to final achieve one of my long-term goals — finishing this dumb 105 mile route at over 20mph. Had been working on that for something like 6 years.
Burn out in the hot hot heat
Then… well, the bottom kind of dropped out. Work got stressful, it got hot (I hate the heat), I just had no ambition. Shit, I almost forgot, my dog died too… To be frank, I was ok with no motivation. It just felt like the right way to be at the time. Lots of easy morning spins before the heat, good food (some might say bad), good beer, little discipline. It was glorious!
But let’s be real, I’m not a person who can keep that going. There came a point where I had to find something to do with myself. I’d gained 8 pounds, lost half my fitness, and woke up hung over too many times in August.
The up swing
So what did I do? Well, I didn’t go cold turkey that’s for sure. It was a transition. First I picked out some small projects around the house and some fun activities to do with the Family. Just some conscious choices to do some planned activities.
In previous years, some running in late summer has been a much needed break, but it was too hard on my body with the extra weight I’d put on. I developed a strange lower back pain in late August and took the first week of September off. Then, one day in that period, a buddy mentioned an E-race series coming up organized by a local bike team.
The next big thing
The team my friend races with over on Zwift is kind of a big deal… and I was totally stoked to get the invite to ride with them. In years past, I worked my way to Category 1 in road racing and am a hopelessly competitive racer when it comes down to it. So it’s all in. Let’s do this. With some exceptions.
E-races are short and HARD.
The physiology they demand is top end VO2+ efforts. Building a huge capacity for longer events like I had been is just not necessary. This has implications for the kind of training I need to do.
Training weeks of more than 10 hours will be rare.
I’m sure there will be weeks that get long, but I am going to focus on quality sessions and rest. Getting fresh and training for short hard races is the goal. I’ll stick to mid-weak intervals and instead of a long ride on the weekend, a race and maybe some tempo work is in order.
Race weight
This is the one I hate. But love because it’s the challenge I have the most difficulty with. The first race weekend of the series is November 13th and I’d be a non-factor in the hilly races. Pushing my weight down with a strong focus on nutrition will be a major focus.
Stay on target
So that’s it for now — the question that remains is, how do we go from here? What’s the measurable goal? How to execute a plan to achieve it? How to check in on progress?
We’ll get to that next time.
In the mean time, if you are into practical training ideas, have a look at my old blogs.
