Lovin' My Bike Trainer

We are three weeks into the new year and so far, I have found that I am LOVING my bike trainer.  I have ridden it 3-4 times per week since I got in last month and am seeing much improvement in my bike fitness.  I have also completed four weeks of cycling specific weight training that has helped as well. 

I don't have a power meter (anyone who wants to buy me one, the Cyclops Powertap Pro Alloy Training Wheel Set would be peachy), so I am using average speed, distance, and revolutions that the rear wheel spins for a given workout to determine improvement.  For one particular interval workout, the revolutions for a workout on 12/24/11 was 13,656 for 1 hour.  On 1/14/12 it was 14,748 - roughly a 7.4% improvement.  I'll take that...

As for the weight training, I am doing squats, hack squats, leg presses, leg curls, bench press, pull-ups, and dead lifts.  So far, the training has been designed more to help me get used to the motions of the workouts, but I can already tell a difference in how I feel on the bike.  My back is stronger and I feel like I have more stamina on the bike.  Yay!

The slow carb diet has was difficult to get into at the start of the year because I had to get back used to traveling again which was difficult.  But this past week I finally had a 'breakthrough' week and finally earned my cheat day (today).  I also lost 5 pounds, which is encouraging as well. 

And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the progress so far this year.  Overall, I am pleased with where I am at this point and am looking forward to continuing on in the coming weeks/months.  Next week I will be in Bham all week so it will be another good week to stay with the program.  And on 1/30/12 I will start an 11 week Outseason Training Program where I will add in some running and other high intensity cycling.  I am modeling this Program after the free resources at endurancenation.us (if I any of you wanted to purchase me their training packages, feel free to do that as well). 

Anyway - that's it for now.  Until next time..... have a great day!