On deck

It's almost February. Race #1 is on April 1st.

It's time to get on with the program and move into the SMSP intervals. Once again my endurance phase is shorter than planned. However, this year has been different in that in early fall and throughout the weight training we've done some really good rides due to the wonderful weather.

Some of these rides included intensity too. I'm definitely pleased with my conditioning at this point in the year. Even though I didn't do a 3 week true base phase I think those rides have helped set me up well to go into the intervals. A little bit of intensity seemed to be a good ticket.

I'll say this now and hopefully someone will remind me come October. I'm not making this mistake again. Come mid October, some riding will get cut back, and the easy transition lifting will begin. I don't think the late October races will be affected given that I rode well at the start of the strength training phase this year.

Then there will be 2weeks Hyp, 2 weeks strength, 2 weeks power. Base riding will begin as part of the power phase. Ideally this will put me in base mode in November/December instead of the end of January.

I'm thinking of starting the SMSP intervals on Tuesday, maybe Wednesday. Typcially the program calls for 3 weeks of SMSP intervals followed by a recovery week then 3 weeks of MSP.

From experience I've noticed that I don't do well in 3 week cycles. I seem to do better with 2 week cycles. 2 weeks followed by a protracted recovery period of 4-5 days (instead of 7 as in the book).

So the plan is to go right into the SMSP next week for 2 weeks, the take a 5 day recovery period (**NOTE Morris Recovery periods are not just 5 days on the couch. There are easy rides and some intervals to keep from getting stale)