This evening I finally made it through most of the Cyclist's Training Bible by Joe Friel. That is to say, I skimmed it, progressivly reading less and less of each chapter until I was flipping back and forth just to make any sense of it at all.
It's good book. It better be considering how many people swear by it.
Last year, I was a committed Time Crunched devotee, following that plan prior to CX Season, and this spring before P2A. It worked well for me, but I've got a bit more time than the 6-8 hours a week it calls for and have felt like it's missing something for me.
Reading through the CTB gave me a few insights that, I'm pretty sure, a couple people have been telling me for more than a few months. Mainly:
- Super long rides are fine, but not tremendously valuable
- I suck at sprinting and small hills
- I have no power in the flats
- I suck at turning a big gear
Basically up until now I've been doing long rides. The Time Crunched Plan of course includes lots of intervals, at and above threshold. But, in hindsight, it doesn't prepare me very well for coming out of a corner and sprinting to the next one. It does't help me turn a low rpm gear up a short bump like in the image above where, about 1 second later, I came to a complete stop.
So I've taken this to heart, and have re-planned out the rest of my year accordingly. There are lots of long rides planned, but I'll be working on some of the things I suck at along the way. I'll even be doing the Time Crunched Plan, just modified to suit my skinny legs.
In doing so I'm super pumped about the upcoming CX season. We'll see how it goes.
