Volumize

My 2019 cyclocross season has been busy: 3 WCA races, 6 practice races at Royal Oaks, 1 skills practice at Ridge Run … all since August 13. That’s something cyclocross-y every 3 days or so, on average.

But now there’s a little break. This year’s Royal Oaks practice series reached its conclusion yesterday, and my next WCA race is 10 days away. It’s time to ramp up the training volume, big-time. Experience has taught me that as the cyclocross season progresses my performance drops because my overall training volume drops. Cooler temperatures and fewer hours of daylight lead to less saddle time. And historically I’ve done a poor job of complementing outdoor rides with turbo trainer rides, which I know would do me a world of good if I took them seriously.

The weather still looks OK though, so I’m planning several long training rides. Today the big, beefy Gatorskins went back on the cyclocross bike—I’ll save the race tires for competition—and I covered 32 miles on the Eisenbahn State Trail. Sometime during this period I also would like to hit the Wild Goose State Trail and perhaps others, but nothing is more convenient than the Eisenbahn. It’s not hard to imagine that the trail I can see from my living room is the one I will use most often.

I’m now only 166 miles away from my 11th straight 4,000-mile season, and I mean to surpass that goal next week. This will be a Top 10 year for mileage if I surpass 4,410, but it won’t be a 5,000-mile year. And the all-time record of 6,236 miles, set in 2015, is safe until at least 2020.