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Day 7, was another “recovery” day. 3:45 and 65miles. If that is recovery. Another nice day and I was feeling the week’s effort. We road a steady pace on the climbs and I dropped back towards the top on all 3 of them. My HR was very low and I thought that I had better take it easy rather than dig a hole for myself. I feel I am coming out of this week stronger than I have ever been and I can not wait to test it out in the races to come very soon.

This trip has been wonderful. The scenery, cows, goats, mountains, the descents that go forever and the climbs that go further. Our tan lines are in full form now and I hope they do their job, intimidation.  Its funny when I first started racing my cycling mentor, Todd, was calming me down before an early season race. I was getting very intimidated by almost every one. He said, “No, No Eric, don’t worry about them. You’ll be fine. The guys you need to worry about are the ones that show up in April with matching bikes and tan lines”. And now… that’s me. It makes me feel really honored to have come full circle like that.

I’ll miss a lot about this trip: our friendly dog that lives down the road from us, greeting us every day. His wrinkly face flapping in the wind, tong hanging out. I’ll miss the gas station lunches. The animals, the southern charm, the slow mornings and the hot tub that greeted us at the end of every ride. I’ll miss the company of my teammates, I’ll miss worrying about nothing else but trying to figure out how to get my body up to the task of riding yet another brutal course for yet another brutal day.

Totals for the week:
We did 36 hr’s of riding, for 600 miles and around 55,000 feet of elevation gain.
I spent around 10 hours at my threshold. Plus or minus, but mostly plus. That’s also over 194,000 pedal strokes, give or take, but who’s counting?
I can’t even begin to think how many calories I ate, but it was a lot. At first I thought I didn’t lose any weight but after a week or so at home I am lighter than I have ever been and broken almost all my records back here on my local riding routes.

Some thoughts on mega training weeks. Make sure you are ready! Training should be “challenging” not “over-whelming” a few days in a row of over-whelming training and you’ll be either selling your bike and wet suit or driving home after every race saying, “I felt soooo good yesterday, what happened?” Know what your capable of, but challenge it frequently. I was ready for a week like this, I had good days, I also had some days of… “vulnerability” lets say, but I was ready. Listen to your body. Some times it’s just not your day. If not, don’t worry, it will come. It will.  It takes a lot of planning, preparation and training to get ready for a training block that really stretches you, but it’s well worth it. A week or even a long weekend of focused, hard, specific training can carry you through a whole season of racing. If done correctly.

happy training, exhilarating racing…

Read more about Eric's training in his blog