Crosssports's Weblog

Howdy folks,

Day 5!  Friday!

It being Friday, whatever you do today should be largely predicated on your plans for the weekend. If you’re racing or riding hard over the next couple of days, than you should take it easy today.

How easy?

Depends on how hard you’re planning to go this weekend.

If you happen to be racing this weekend – and if there’s racing available, it might be a good idea to get yourself some of that** – then today you should be doing yourself some openers.

Something like these.

If you aren’t racing this weekend, then – spoiler alert – I’m going to recommend that you get some long miles in. Given that, and given that we ran yesterday, the prescription for today begins to look an awful lot like “go easy, damnit.”

So, that’s the workout for today. Take it easy. Damnit.
Save some energy so you can hit it hard and long tomorrow.

If your legs are feeling that first run of the year from yesterday, go for a nice…

Recovery Spin – 

– Get on your bike. Roll out into the street – or into your living room if you’re on the turbo watching the vid – and just spin around for an hour. Or more. Or less. Whatever it takes.

– Really small gear, no hard efforts – heck, no medium effort.

– Spin. You’re looking to move your legs around in circles, almost like there is no chain on the bike.

– The idea is to get your body moving, flush the systems out, and speed your recovery.

– Just get out on the road and spin easily and aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs will start to loosen up.

– When that happens, turn around and go home.

–  If you’re doing these on the trainer, same deal. Just spin. No hard efforts, just make the legs go around in circles in a small gear.

– Follow up with as much relaxation as you can. Eat, stretch, and put your legs up. Get a massage if possible.

At most, go for a…

One to Two Hour Moderate Ride –

Get on your bike.

Go ride for an hour or two.

No hard efforts, but do throw in a couple of moderate ones. By moderate, I mean just that. You can sprint for the town line, but you should be laughing while you do it.

You’re not doing a recovery spin, so you need to put a little bit of gas into the pedals… just don’t go out and kill yourself.

Check out the view, smell the flowers, just do it while you’re putting a little bit of effort into the pedals.

1 notch above a recovery ride.

Make sense?

Have fun!

M

**  – Might be good, ’cause racing ain’t everything, and in some ways it can be counterproductive. You’ve got to actually train for the specific demands of Cross if you want to be as good at it as you can be, and those demands ain’t exactly what you’re going to find in your local road or MTB race.
Stay tuned, I’m working on a full-length article on the topic. Details when I manage to crank the damn thing out.

~ by crosssports on July 21, 2017.

Posted in Cyclocross, The Workout Of The Day