you do everything right, and once you've recovered and adapted, you get back on the bike, and FLY.

It's all worth it and I remember why I started doing this in the first place.

+1

I've been following a training plan for the last year......I like FLYING! There's something about not getting dropped and being one of the faster people in the group now. Feels good and makes the training worth it.

What type of training plan are you doing? Could you be more specific on your regimen.

Periodization. Aimed for two peaks this year, the first one was lackluster, I'm about to hit my taper week and I have a feeling I'm going to come back a lottttt stronger. Was doing a lot of vo2 intervals also other criterium specific intervals, I'll really find out after I let my body rebuild this week but I can tell I've gone to a new level. One thing I did differently was less riding and more resting but when I rode it was full out suffer sessions targeting particular things I needed to work on. Just cut out all the junk miles and traded them for rest days.

thats crazy. i havent had a suffer session yet. ive felt tired and my legs have been burning but i still havent reach the level where im feeling tremendous pain. Trying to build up my stamina/endurance before I encounter a hill that eats me up alive and leaves me walking with my tail between my legs.

I've been doing workouts where with cool down and warm up I'm only on the bike for 1.5 hours that hurt more than a lot of 3 hour sessions I did earlier in the year. Then again 99.9% of my races are over in 45 minutes though so different strokes for different folks.

You should do more road races. Way more fun than crits IMO.

Red is the best.

train hard, race smart. it requires regular hard work and eating right...tough to keep up!

Well, your opinion is wrong

The training has been easy to keep up, esp since I started doing only 4 days of training a week with full days of rest at higher intensities. I've had trouble being disciplined with eating, I'm still eating high quality whole foods for the most part, but I'm eating WAY too much. I got SO lean during the off season while I was doing base training, but wasn't able to maintain it during the season. Going to have to do things differently next season nutrition wise.