The Cyclocross Workout Of The Day for Saturday, 9.5.15. “Tom Likes Unions, you should too”
Howdy folks,
Welcome to Labor Day Weekend!
Which is, of course, a day off on Monday for most people.
Yay! Enjoying the holiday?
Thank organized labor.
You know this guy is!
Anyways, Labor Day Weekend also means it’s a race weekend for a lot of folks.
If You’re one of ’em, you’ve got a choice to make.
Are you taking the race on Monday seriously, or are you just rolling through it as a fun intro to the season’s racing?
If you’re putting some mojo into the race on Monday, you should take it pretty easy in your training today.
Go for a nice, easy Recovery Spin, or maybe even take the day off the bike.
Tomorrow (Sunday) will feature some intensity and speed to open up your legs for the race, but if you want to be flying on Monday?
Need to chill a bit today.
That’s just one choice, though.
You might also choose to ride through the race on Monday, and sacrifice a bit of performance in this one event for the potential of gains in fitness later on down the road.
How does that work?
Well, basically, you treat race day just like any other training day.
You aren’t trying to be particularly fast or on form for that day, and you aren’t focusing your training schedule on that day.
For a Monday race, training through would mean that you go about your weekend as you normally would, and then just show up at the race after a couple of days of (probably) pretty hard riding and see what happens.
That might not be a bad way to go this early in the grand scheme of things, but I can’t really tell you if it is or not.
What I can tell you is that if you’re riding through, really ride through.
Don’t half-ass it, or use riding through as the excuse you tell your buddies for having a crappy day.
Go hard this weekend and then just race with whatever is left in your legs on Monday
Or take it easy today, hit the openers tomorrow, and try to give it your best on Monday.
Either one of those is a good plan.
An indecisive muddling-through, middle ground, neither one nor the other approach, though?
Not a good plan.
So pick one.
And rock it.
Make sense?
Good.
So now that you’ve thought about it a bit, are you riding through this weekend, or not racing at all this weekend?
Nice.
Today, go for a…
Hard Group Ride –
Get out there and kick some A** on the local roadie ride, or on the trails with your buddies.
Push the pace if and when you can, try and go hard – harder than usual – and see how you recover from some stiff efforts on a course or in a group you know pretty well.
Duration? 3 hours or so. OK to go long(er. Ish.) today, but better to go kinda long and really damn hard.
Try to ride a bit over your head.
Either ride with a group of riders that are just slightly better than you – and ride defensively – or push the tempo at the front with a group that you’re comfortable in.
Have fun!
M
PS – If it just so happens that you’re racing on Saturday this weekend, have fun! Racing on Sunday?
Openers today. Check this out for more info.
“Tom Brady 2011” by Jeffrey Beall – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Brady_2011.JPG#/media/File:Tom_Brady_2011.JPG
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