Broke the new standard!
You may be asking what the ‘standard’ is that I mentioned above. There is a time standard per kilometer that is used as a criteria to guide selection of the fastest cyclists for major events per category. The standard is getting faster year by year. It can be tough to beat on a regular basis. The fastest paracyclists set the times. Team USA has a panel that selects which courses are selected to take these times from. It is a system that needs some help but it pushes people to ride faster. I beat the new standard in my first domestic race of 2024 here in Arizona called Valley of The Sun Stage Race. I think two of my times last year were faster than this years standard. Last year it was 2:20/km and this year it is 2:16.4. A bit ridiculous to jump 3.5 seconds in a year in my opinion.
Training has been well. I need to ease up on intensity a bit Two days of intensity per week is enough for me. With the limited function I have it can be easy to overtrain. Fatigue is a major barrier to quality training and progression. The next race is not until April 6-7 in Texas. This race will serve as the selection race for the 2nd and 3rd world cup events. The 2nd is in Ostend, Belgium and the 3rd is in Maniago, Italy. It s such a huge year, stress included, being a paralympic year. I need to pace myself. I am looking forward to the next 5 weeks of training before Texas.
Other than what was mentioned above the class I am teaching is going well. The 16 week semester is much more teacher/student friendly than the intense 8 week courses. Time to gradually learn and acquire skills is much better than forcing everything into 8 weeks. Sees like a lot of things, outside of school, are like that as well in that everything is rushed. Good for some things but definitely not some as well. In the next month I’m going to work on gradually increasing the time of intervals at my time trial pace of 90-100 watts. My FTP is around 87ish, depending on course/day/etc,, so I’d like to get that above 90. Will be in Tucson 2 -3 times before the next blog training with higher functioning riders. I am also training with 3 older guys that challenge me. They are all higher functioning yet push me hard!
