Training

Well, training for the world cups has begun. After dedicating a lot of my time and energy to racing throughout the last 10 years, I decided that I had to experience competing at the highest level before I ever moved on from racing. Well I won't be ready to move on for a couple more years, but I'm going after the Switzerland and Italy world cups this July. In planning my training for the last few weeks leading up to the races I came across this quote from our Pastor Rick Warren -

"Wanting to be the best at anything is a competitive ambition, not a Life Mission. You were created for a purpose far greater"

Although I'm going to work and rest as hard as I can to be at my best for these races, my goals are not to be the best. My goals are more along the lines of using the gifts God gave me to their fullest and cycling just happens to be one of my gifts.

As far as the actual training goes, the work week last week was spent trying to rest and recover. After that i hit the road for 4.5 hrs saturday followed by the Como Street group ride Sunday. There are some great training races going on here in Orange County now - Tuesday night mountain bike races (with 300 people showing up each week!) and Thursday night crits - both within a 1hr ride of my office. The plan is to do my own workouts for the first 2 weeks of my training block though and hit the training races the 3rd week. We'll see how it goes. This week my 2 main workouts are short V02 intervals today (2 sets of 4-5 climbs up cholla on the mtn bike) and a tempo workout through Santiago Canyon Thursday. This weekend will either be the CA State Series race in Big Bear or a threshold climbing ride Saturday followed by the group ride Sunday.

Wish me luck and I'll keep everyone posted on the progress.