But I have to saw, racing back to back weekends is pretty tough. We had the indoor time trial last weekend and there was quite a bit of intensity work leading up to that event. Even though the TT itself was only a 10K on the bike, it still requires a ton of concentration and super high HR's. It's pretty tough in a practice setting to work as hard as you do in a race, and so the indoor TT and this past weekend's 10K and Half Marathon were great opportunities to test your limits. I don't know about you, but I saw a pretty high HR at the indoor TT, and even though I recovered, it was still lingering in my legs over the following week as I "tapered" my runs and intensity leading up to the half. And then again, during the half, I saw a fairly higher HR than expected during my run, and I know that at the end I was pretty cooked.
Now this week we are jumping back into intensity. I watched the faces on our athletes last night as we did 4x 2+min efforts at 103% of vVO2. That was a tough workout and many of those athletes who raced over the weekend most likely were not hitting their target HR's. Or, they may have hit their target HR's early on, and then were unable to sustain their power or speed. However, even though the intensity is tough right now, these athletes are teaching their bodies to deal with the stress and then with adequate recovery periods, come back from the stress and improve their speeds/power.
It's hard to get back on the horse after a race- but when you do and follow your program the rewards are great. We have one more week left in our build program and then it will be time for our athletes to hit the roads and begin preseason.
Racing begins in only a few weeks, can't wait to see our results.
Train Hard, Train Smart-
Ali