A January Week in Training
9 Jan
Wednesday marked my first lunch ride in quite awhile, and the first time on my road bike in a week. When I went to the locker room I remembered I had my very own 24/7 locker for the year.
Score
Winter boots to winter cycling shoes (it was 81F out)
Can never be too careful
I decided it was a Twin Six metal kind of day
Wednesday also marked the return of the #coffeebong in the Mann household. Our first Bodum vacuum coffee maker met an unfortunate end the Wednesday before, but mom replaced it with a new one, and we were ready to ROCK on Thursday morning.
I can haz mohr?
I borrowed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from Steph on New Year’s. I can’t put it down. Enjoyed reading a bit at lunch this week.
Thursday night rung in trainer time! While Justin pulled pork (from the slow cooker – it smelled so amazing I barely finished my workout, oh but wait, that was because it was hard, not only because of the amazing smell from the kitchen), I got in a decent interval workout.
Thank goodness for distractions.
Dinner was so good I forgot to get a picture of it.
Friday dawned nice and clear, warm again, though cooler than the rest of the week. I was super stoked to ride with Justin again since we hadn’t ridden together since Monday!
He wasn’t hurting – it was his 2nd trip up the hill and he was being nice riding 2nd wheel.
Nice day for a ride!
Despite the warmer temps I’ve been wearing my “ski boot” winter shoes most of the time.
Loving riding with my guy!
He broke off after to do a few bonus miles for the Strava Base Mile Blast. It’s legit – with a cross race on Saturday he won’t get much mileage!
Well, after Justin bonus’d on Friday, he was winning the mileage battle for the weekend. Fortunately for me he headed south in the car at 8 am for his cross race, and I headed out to meet up with partial ride buddy CPT for about 40 minutes of fun and conversation. Totally helped the time whiz by!
Climbing
CPT had races waiting, so she took her leave to head down to CSU San Marcos the direct route.
Solo
“Brief”? stop where I let Justin know where I was at, and noticed how awesome the orange groves looked across the street
10:30 and still chilly out!! 52F.
The ride was cold enough for me that I had my electric battery powered socks on “HI” for about 85% of the ride
Plus, I was wearing my “ski boots”.
After about 2 hours in the sun I headed west into the fog bank.
Was wishing I’d worn my Rock n’ Road vest at this point!
“I’m cold” face
I got kind of down for awhile on the ride, had to do some route finding, and after riding for 2:40 made myself stop to eat something and drink my first bottle of water. I think I’d been too cold before to even notice.
More route finding, little fatigue and exhaustion, and eventually I found Justin!
Post ride, recovering 110% so I could Play Harder on Sunday!
Plus, some warm tea and a recovery snack
Chilled out in the car and read while Justin got some bonus miles with Dmac (not Dan, the David Mc variety!)
For our efforts we stopped at Stone for a brew before heading north
Last but not least, it was Sunday.
Lubing up with Endur-It for 3.5 hours in the saddle!
Justin, Jeff and I left from a few hundred feet above Aliso Woods and headed down to the trailhead to meet up with B4B advocates Dang and Metcalfe for a few hours of fun in the dirt and sun. Supposedly it was really windy.
Gorgeous morning on the bikes
Baby wheels keep on turning
My ride called for a mix of road and dirt, so we rode to the trailhead, and after the crew took their leave, Justin and I made another trip back up the canyon, descended down Stairsteps, and did about 45 mins of road riding to finish it out.
Nice day for a ride!
We got to Jeff’s post-ride, had some grub, shared a beer, BBQ’d some dinner, and eventually it was time for Justin and I head east and get home to get ready for the work week. We had all checked out the full moon, and over Elsinore we had to stop and get a shot of “moon on the water” for mom!
Solid week of training for me, with a good amount of volume and some intensity. Few long rides over the weekend left me pretty tired. Good thing – I’m on recovery week starting Monday morning!
That was one week of training in January for me. What’d you do this weekend?
After a successful 2010 that led Allison to her 1st international competition, at the 2010 UCI Mountain Bike & Trials World Championships in Mont-Sainte-Anne, she succumed to an injury that kept her off the bike and out of training for 2011. Missing out valuable training time, race experience, and needed results in 2011, Allison has ensured 2012 will be a solid year of training, racing, and new experiences across the country and internationally where she plans to race and promote Bikes for Boobs benefitting Mammograms in Action. She continues to ride and race with mutual support from Rock N' Road Cyclery in Orange County, as well as with her husband, Justin.
cool blog – love the informative posts. Heard about your feats of strength from Brendan and Mary Collier. Bummer you couldn’t make the San Jacinto Enduro this year (my first ‘real’ race in a looong time.) I was having some trouble with feet/shoes as of late too; using 7mm neoprene inserts really took a lot of the pressure off and made my Shimano M77′s go from short period training shoe to an all day comfort shoe. Hope your recovery is going well!