To some cyclists, this time of year might easily be classified as the “off season”, a time to catch up on needlepoint, those nagging around-the-house projects, and the innumerable “real life” activities that seemingly get brushed aside during the sunny weekends of spring/summer/fall.  For those of us keen to be in-saddle and on-form in April, however, January is an unfortunately critical time to log base miles whilst tip-toeing around frost bite, black ice, and the errant stealthy salt truck.

As I imagine is true for most all in the east, this winter has been *particularly* oppressive.  Sure, it’s been colder.  Sure, we’ve had bigger dumps.  I am, however, hard-pressed to recall such a long stint during which the mercury has been as depressed as Alberto Contador last July.

Before the weather took a turn for the worst, I subjected myself to a  pre-training baseline test, basically a 30 minute TT on a nearby three turn-around parcours, pancake-flat and free of traffic:

Not bad for benchmark: 33 minutes, around 350 watts average, and with surprisingly decent TT technique – steadily rising HR and without overshooting my power target in the opening Km’s.  Following the intervening heinous winter and its associated hiccups in training plans (5 hours… 4 degrees…let’s take a look at the DVD collection…), I was concerned about how well my fitness was coming along.  Thus, following the second of three base blocks I returned to the same proving grounds and brought out the pain gauge for proper calibration (below):

As may be evident – a much worse TT with way better results!  Despite my thinking I was hot stuff and taking off like a bat out of hell (HR spike, way over-shooting power) I managed to shave a minute off my time and average 375 Watts (a 25 Watt improvement)!  After a month of logging miles and building endurance fitness in what should have been reassigned as “tundra” by now, these were encouraging results. Still a little short of racing targets, but right on track to be rockin’ out by mid-April!

Now if I can only shave those few Kg’s of holiday cookies….