Week one of my CTS Training
 

Greetings,

Here's a quick summary of my first week of training with the CTS folks.

I had rides scheduled for 6 out of 7 days. Some of the rides consisted of riding for a specific period of time and others had specific workout tasks to complete during the ride.

I have found that commuting is taking a toll on my training time. Some days I'm riding 3 separate rides totaling 2 1/2 hours. I'll ride into work (1/2 hour), home (1/2 hour) have a short break (1 - 2 hours) and then head out for the 1 - 1 1/2 hour workout. I've asked my coach to try and come up with some shorter workouts for me to try so that I may be able to do them at lunch and when I ride home in the afternoon I'll be done for the day. We'll see.

Yesterday I did have a bad experience doing one of the prescribed workouts. I was attempting to do muscle tension intervals. Basically you put it in a big gear (52x12 to 52 x 15) and then ride this gear up an incline. I made it 3 minutes into the first one and had to quit because my knees were killing me :( I cut yesterdays 2 1/2 hour ride down to 1 1/2 hours because once the knees started to hurt I bagged the ride and had Donna come pick me up.

A possible contributing factor is different crank arm length. For most of last week I've been riding a Fuji Ace that I built for my daughter to ride. It has 170mm cranks on it. Yesterday when I went out for my long ride I did it on the K2 which has 175mm cranks on it. Because I have found the 170mm cranks easier on my knees I've ordered a new crankset and bottom bracket and will be switching to 170mm cranks on my K2.

We'll see what this week has in store for me :) Hopefully my coach can come up with a series of workouts that better fit into my current schedule.

Zack

Keep us posted, Zack. I'm very interested as to how your training improves you as a cyclists, and the issues that you face along the way. :)

thanks for taking the time to post the report Zack, i'm very interested as well.

Great Job!! Hopefully your coach will tailor your workouts to best fit your schedule. Keep up the good work and you should notice improvements in your cycling before you know it! Kind of funny how those things just kind of sneak up on you - and when they do, it's great!

ZJ,

Curious how the first week of the CTS outline compares with your pre-CTS cycling intensity / mileage / duration? Has your coach significantly upped your saddle time from the get go or have you started from a point that you are conditioned to and will gradually increase from there?

t/e

All,

It's good to see others are interested :)

I have my new schedule (for the first 20 days of July) and my coach took some of my concerns into account when building the new schedule. I asked for some shorter (45 minute) workouts that I could get in at lunch and she's add those. It appears she ignored my concern regarding the muscle tension intervals. She not only kept them but increased the duration and number of reps! I'll do these but it'll be with an easier gear like 52x18 or something like that.

My next field test is scheduled for the 18th and she's cut my rest time between them to 10 minutes.

threadend: My pre-CTS intensity and mileage was less than what I'm doing now. Prior to starting CTS I'd commute like I do now and then normally would only ride on Tues and Thurs evenings with Donna. Now I'm commuting and riding almost everyday.

Zack

Edited to add: The extra riding is helping with my weight loss as well. Despite going to a cookout on Saturday and pigging out I've dropped two pounds in the past week.