What's next?

My break is over and now it's time to enter back into a base period. I do hate those first few days after a few weeks off the bike... when you still have the fitness to do some work, but all the tender and moving parts of you moan and hurt just that little bit to remind you that they enjoyed sitting on the couch more than they enjoy sitting on a saddle. It never ceases to amaze me that you could be averaging 2hours/day for months, take a short break, and then riding for an hour feels like eternity until the body re-adjusts.

So now it's nose back to the grindstone for a while. Most everyone has issues with it turning to worse weather, but since I do the vast majority of my training indoors anyways, it's pretty much business as usual for me.  I do hope to make it back to the track a few times before full on winter though... we'll just have to see if it all lines up.

As for next season... the planning is already taking place. Of course I am looking at another shot at the State Championship TT... I was soundly beaten this year, but wasn't totally on top of my game. Another year's worth of fine tuning and hard work will hopefully give me what I need to finally take that top step.  I also missed the track TN championships this year, which was unfortunate, it's definitely on my list for next year.

But primarily, it's the hour record that has my attention. I can do an hour, now I just need to fine tune doing it and start squeezing in more laps. The fact that my legs were in perfect shape afterwards tells me I wasn't working anywhere near my max at Rock Hill (although other factors certainly made up for a lot of that) so now I've been lured into the hour's hold. I'm not sure how far I can go with it, but right now it is what I'll continue building for. There are a couple of other velodrome records I'd like to use as test runs to improve my technical abilities... but my eye is really on the US Masters record. Time will tell whether that is a far fetched dream or not, but it's a nice carrot to consider during the long months ahead.

Until next time, thanks so much for reading!

- Christopher Morelock