School has begun with new students staring at me wondering what the year will bring. I took the liberty to ride a lot this summer and I have committed to coaching soccer next spring and summer school next summer.

With the SS champs only 3 weeks away my weekly hours will decrease by 3 or 4 and my CTL may drop a bit. The plan is to get it as high as possible before that race weekend, peak at around +20 and then salvage what I can for cross. With the Gloucester race in mid-October I should be pretty fresh but I have a bunch of traning all fall to get to nationals. Probably will not care about results for the GA CX series and try to just use them as a means to an end.

Brendan Sullivan is pretty much winning at will these days and his passion is cross so either he will burn up with all this racing (not likely) or he will enter the CX season ready to destroy. I just hope he can keep it cranked up until December. I really think he can get on the podium in December if he show a little restraint, does some longer A races this fall and maybe goes to 2-3 UCI races. Either way he is very talented and has come a long, long way in 2 years.

Grearing for the SS champs is going to be interesting. I have heard that a 2:1 might be too hard. I won't get to pre-ride so I will probably take 2 wheels. I may elect to try and push a 34x16 for the TT depending on how long it is.

The intervals in the picture below were 45 second intervals at or above 400w. I did 2 sets of 8. They look hard but on a good hill they are not really unbearable. I find the extended VO2 max intervals like a 5x5, 8x3 or 10x2 at around 330w to be much harder to do and I really have to take it easy the day before if I want to complete them, especially in the mid-day heat. I like the threshold intervals these days because compared to the VO2 max intervals they are pretty mellow. After the SS champs I will have to work on leg speed and sprints since I am not doing that stuff right now. I assume I will be doing some sort of microburst workouts at some point or maybe pyramids and they usually bring my lunch up in my throat. Very hard.