I have no idea what this being wide awake at 1am BS is about but it freaking sucks! Anyhow, I've sort of fallen off the wagon since Saturday. Had an ok endurance ride but then we got snow and ice and I haven't been on my bike since. Not a good thing being that my first race of the season is only 2.5 weeks away. Was planning to do hill repeats after work yesterday but opted to take my little boy sledding instead. That's always a win though! Plus I was having some post nasal drip stuff going on so it's probably for the best that I stayed off the bike. Seeing as how I am up and wide awake (sigh) I think I'll set the trainer up in the kitchen and spin for an hour or so before heading off to work. I'll knock those hill repeats out today after work.

Rest Week Quick Spin

Yesterday was the 4th day of my rest week. I've limited myself to just riding around the yard and up/down  the street. Pretty much just playing around popping wheelies and whatnot. I suck at wheelies by the way! Anyhow yesterday I decided to go for a quick 5 miler on my road bike (Windsor Clockwork 46x18 gearing). As I rode away from the house my legs felt a little heavy. However after a minute or two they seemed to clear out and I felt as though I were flying! Even the hills felt super easy. I never got above low zone 3 and when I made it back to the house I had averaged 29.5 mph over the 5.2 miles according to Strava! Its crazy how big of a difference "proper" training combined with a  healthy diet and lower body weight makes as opposed to just riding hard for training.

My first race of the season is little over 3 weeks away. I honestly have no idea how I'm going to stack up to the competition this year but I am certainly excited to find out!

I always find rest weeks to be harder than the "hard" weeks. After putting in 12 weeks of base I was chomping at the bit to get started doing interval work and just harder rides in  general. The first 3 weeks came and went in the blink of an eye. So fast that I had to double check that it was in-fact 3 weeks. It was. So anyways, I've been mostly focusing on core work this week and riding sparingly at best.


Diet is also something that I have really changed over the last 4 months or so. I don't like to label myself paleo or anything so I just say that I am just eating whole foods. I have to tell myself that anything in a package is not real food. And to be honest, it isn't. Since October I've lost approximately 22 pounds and think I can probably drop 10 more. Some weeks I lost up to a pound but never more than that. I didn't focus on weight loss but instead was just going to be happy with the fact that I was eating a healthy diet. It's pretty crazy how quickly I lost all of the incessant cravings to just eat "something/anything" when I wasn't even hungry to begin with.
 I'll post more about diet later but right now I have to get back to work.

Legs Cooked!

I planned on riding really hard off-road today for around 4hrs on my Spacialized Crave SL with 32x20 gearing. However, right out of the gate I could still feel the fatigue from the intervals I did earlier in the week. I was pretty cooked a little over 1hr into the ride but decided to keep hammering. This coming week is after all a rest week so I figure I should be fine carrying some extra fatigue into it. I ended up putting in over 3 hard hours and kept pushing hard on the climbs. I Strava most of my rides and was surprised/happy to see that I captured the KOM on a tough/technical climb! Knowing that I wasn't going 100% on the climb is an added mental boost as well!

I guess that's about it for today. Not much exciting planned riding wise for the week with it being a rest week and all. Hopefully I'll come out the other end of it refreshed, stronger and lighter.

Here I go!

Well, I've decided to start a blog. I'm not into social media but I do love talking about things that I am passionate about. My life pretty much revolves around 2 things and that is family and riding my bike(s). Particularly single speed bikes. Both road and off-road. It's hard to explain what draws me to single speeds but I absolutely love riding them. I like the fact that you have to take what that one gear and the terrain gives you. The hill gets steeper? There is no shifting into an easier gear. You have to plan/strategize for that steeper section both mentally and physically. The option to sit back and spin doesn't exist, you can only go on the attack "or" give up and walk. I could go on forever but I'm just going to stop here.

Anyhow, whether this thing gets seen by anyone or not, I'm going to be posting here often about my rides/races and other happenings in life.