branman1986

I kept a log of miles and percieved intensity on bikejournal.com so that should prove helpful...Is there a way to link to my journal?

Here's a little background, I started riding in late June when I signed up for BRAG which is the bike ride across georgia. I was basically hooked and started doing regular evening rides all through July. In August I started adding a century every few weeks. By September I started adding weekly training rides and started getting very positive feedback and joined a team. I guess I was a fast-responder. End of September & early October I did 4 races getting 4th, 6th, 4th, 3rd in cat 5 and felt pretty good about my progress. Late October took some time off, November started doing mostly base mile rides with only one intense ride in the middle of the month. I've been doing about 600 miles a month except for October which was about 350.

As you can see, I've been very very unstructured. Looking back I can see that I piled on too much too fast. Most of December was base until the very last week where I ramped it up and started doing the hard Atlanta winter racer-training rides on Sat & Sun. Then in January I started doing almost full intensity on the weekday evening rides as well as doing the hard rides on Sat & Sun. This past Saturday I did the Winter Bike League ride which is a pro-training ride/race in Athen, Ga of 102 miles where miles 90-95 I was perpetually redlined and of course got dropped(The pros can't "attack" until the last 10 miles or so). I followed that with the standard Sunday training ride, but I stayed up front and did the majority of pulling and the intensity was close to Saturday's(55 miles total). I'm on pace for approx 800 miles in Jan.

Basically all my teammates keep saying I'll be a 3 by mid-season and I feel like my goals are a bit too lofty. I'm currently a 5 with very little race experience. I think that's why I've been riding full bore for the past month. I don't really follow a program, I've mainly been doing long basemiles up until recently. If I had been following Friel's program, I think I went from about Base 2 to Build 3 overnight...

My goals are to go from cat 5->3 this season and win either the cat 3 or 4 state championships in late August. I wanted to peak early to get quick race experience and help the teammates in higher cats, then peak again for the state championships. I have no previous endurance sport experience, I played volleyball in college and soccer & basketball recreationally.

I really appreciate the help, Richard, and let me know if there is more detailed information that would help.

edit: oh, I'm 30 years old, and if it will help, I think I can register on bikejournal for $20 and I can link the ride journal. edit2: the other crazy thing is that I feel completely fine. No muscle soreness(I was sore mon-tues) and no joint pain.