March is coming along nice. I got 250 miles in last week which has been my program this month. After three weeks I have 756 miles. The big difference last week was that I mixed in a high cadence road ride and a night mountain bike ride both were riding with geared riders. As strange as it is to say, I did not do any mountain bike riding last year. The entire calendar year. After 6 years of 24 hour racing I was burned out on trail riding. Last night was a great re-introduction to dirt. My strengths have never been technical single track and after the long hiatus I am a bit rusty. Night riding with muddy, rocky terrain did not make it any easier. I am not all too concerned about being the fastest down a trail, but I do care about how I ascend. My hill climbing lungs are a bit behind schedule if I was shooting for the Memorial Day 24 hour race but thinking about peaking in June/July I am doing just fine.
Next year as I hit the final stretch before the Great Divide Race I know I will be doing more than 250 miles a week and spending more of that time on long extended climbs. I probably won't try to duplicate the program that Dave Nice is on. His mega-mileage program wouldn't work for me. I feel more and more confident about my game plan when I hear former Mountain Bike Olympian Greg "Chopper" Randolph saying that if he could do his pro career over he would have trained less and spent more time doing yoga, eating better and just being healthy.
During last night's ride, Ben mentioned that he was going to track his daytime biking mileage against his night time riding with the goal of riding the same if not more at night as during the day. It is an interesting concept and one I may attempt to do if I can figure out how to track it via my bikejournal.com account.
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