#coachnotcoach speaks
November 20, 2018 § 3 Comments
How are things after a week or so of Project Less Sleep? From your blog it seems you went down to 6.0 hours per day. Bold! Dumb, but bold. Didn’t we talk about getting pre-approval before you launch off on stupid shit? Sigh.
I see you are looking at increasing your riding load/volume. A few thoughts:
- Don’t add too much, too soon. It’s a boring and buzzkill cliche, but also packed with truth. Let your mind guide you, but feeling like “Oh, man, I could have done more” is much better than feeling shellacked early in your comeback. Not that you are doing a comeback, since you’ve quit racing. More like a “goaway.”
- I’ve found that increasing an hour a week is about all that a fit and dedicated athlete can add, and you’re neither. Taking a rest-ish week every three or four weeks is good to absorb your training, pathetic and half-hearted though it is.
- Speaking of absorbing the training, that’s THE GOAL Training puts stress on your body sufficient to stimulate the training adaptation (growth) you want. Think about it like this: You suck, right? And you’ve given up, right? Hmmmm, this is going to be harder than I thought.
- In other words, you want to prompt your body to be doing its best growing, not limited to the ugly nose hairs and spiny tufts growing out of your ears. Ecccchh.
- You are seeking the best adaptations. Growing muscle. Tolerance of lactate. Capillary beds (with hemoglobin comforters and oxygen pillowcases). Mitochondria that look like mini-elephant erections. Heart stroke volume without the cranial stroke. Red blood cells. Those last four are all aerobic fitness components. The nasal hair, not so much.
- The goal of training isn’t to wreck yourself and be a training hero, unless being a training hero is your goal, e.g, Head Down James. Nothing wrong with that, but actually, for you it’s impossible because HDJ already is the training hero and that twin bed ain’t got room for two.
- You have one goal, to have your body growing to the best of its ability, as much as possible. Think of it like a bank account. Do you want it to grow smaller? Heck, no. You want it giant, engorged, veiny, and purple with cash. The purpose of riding hard is to induce stress and adaptation, not to be a destroyed and worn out old shoe.
- Frequently people think it is heroic to go for a monster ride. They have never had to cut off the heads of enemies with a machete or charge a machine gun nest. Bicycles aren’t heroic, they are silly. Fun, but silly. And monster rides aren’t usually great for training unless you’re Eddy Merckx, and you know how you can tell whether or not you are Eddy? See if anyone talks to you in Flemish. That’s a good place to start.
- Monster rides keep you from doing the training you need in the subsequent days, to keep pinging your aerobic system to develop, for example. In other words, when you are destroyed and swallowing fistfuls of peanut butter cupcakes, you’ll find that you can’t work out from the couch. So you’re likely better doing three-hour rides than a 12-hour beatdown that takes three days to become ambulatory and two weeks to get your bowel movements back.
- With monster rides, you’re so wrecked that you can’t go hit your system again the next day or two. And your body will keep growing and strengthening its systems only if you stress those systems, which is why I generally avoid days off. Days off are for losers. So you might want to take them. A lot.
Anyway, I only had five minutes to dash off this superficial note. I’ll send you something more detailed and substantive when the check clears, or when the credit card numbers you keep giving me actually work.
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Cycling in the South Bay 
Gospel. And in 10 commandments too.
I guess the extraneous hair isn’t controversial enough.
But personally believe in 8-9hrs sleep a night, given that the body takes about 6hrs of sleep to start producing HGH and other things that typically people like to purchase from there Dr’s.
Haaa!