New year, new season has started!

A long time and no update, I apologize. I am back! Just coming out of a weeklong flu that had me down and out for a few days. Hopefully I have now gotten my sick time out of the way for this winter. I thought I would use this post as an update on my training since my last update.

So the big news is that I have yet to mount my bike on a trainer. That isn’t as bad as it sounds. The McMaster gym has sweet spin bikes and I have been putting all my spin time on those bad boys. Plus, getting the spin hours in while a spin class is going on is a lot more motivating than sitting at home on the trainer. I find I sweat as much doing base watts as most participants do while working hard so it looks like I am working just as hard anyway. My volume has definitely dialed back a bunch since the fall when I ramped it up before the temperature and sunlight dropped off.

I have been working the past 3 months with my coach Jeff Kehler doing kettlebell and TRX workouts to build strength and stability. My little brother also joined in the fun, and he helps build that extra motivation on certain workouts where I maybe wasn’t feeling it. I had to make sure that he knew I was still stronger than him! I am definitely feeling a lot stronger from all of it. I also got some nice upper body strength now that will unfortunately go away over the coming months. Too bad it wasn’t beach season now as I am ready to impress! The best achievement from this was a Turkish getup with a 70lb bell. That was tough to hold up!

Finally, the last thing that has been keeping me off the trainer is running. After seeing so many runners do well on bikes, I figured it couldn’t hurt. It is also way easier to go out in the cold for a run, than a ride especially when it is wet out. It makes training a bit more enjoyable with some diversity at a time when a little cross training is encouraged. Changing sports a bit also gives you the ability to be social with people in other sports, just in case you get tired of talking to the same cyclists everyday!

Hopefully I won’t be run down with work and I will be updating again soon. Thanks for checking in!