Back on the Bike

May was not a fun month for me on several levels. Nasty acquisition stuff at work wasn't too fun to deal with and gave me a few more grey hairs. But probably the most annoying was the re-aggravation to my old L4/L5 injury. I spent 3+ weeks off the bike and missed a couple of races I was really looking forward to...Panoche, Memorial Day crits. Now I'm behind the fitness 8-ball for Pesky, but I'll do it just for the training aspect of the ride.

The difference between now and pre re-injury started earlier this week. In review of my past training habits it was definitely clear that I wasn't resting enough. From what I gather I'm not the only masters racer to fall prey to this poor habit. So this week after my first long, and somewhat hard, ride on Tuesday, I took yesterday off. Usually, I would have gone out and put another hard ride in the books with the hope of trying to get my fitness back ASAP. But now, rest takes a greater precedence and keeping the back happy is more important. I'm also back to doing my core exercises with greater frequency (3-4x a week). I got away from doing these and that wasn't good for the back either. I've got a few other wrinkles I'm going to throw into the training mix too. Nothing to drastic, but stuff more focused on general muscular-skeletal strength and health.

My last little change is going back to a compact crank. The Parlee is going to be picked up with the new SRAM Rival 180mm crank and should be out later today on some hills to get reacquainted with the gearing. It's been 2+ years since I've run a compact so it will be a welcomed change on the hills. I'm hoping it will help me relieve some of the mashing stress from climbing in a harder gear...I'd much rather spin up the mountains.