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Well the off-season training is progressing well. This week was a long one in terms of hours, I logged nearly 14 hours of training. That level is not that unusual for me in the mid-season, but it has been weeks since I have exceeded 7 or 8 hours…

On Saturday night, my team (Memphis Velo) had their annual end-of-season party. It was a good time and nice to see everyone without helmets on for once. During the awards, I was given the “Most Active Racer” award.

I did have a big season this year, logging 34 USCF events over 13 weekends. It was also a long season running from March until mid-September.

Once you factor in cyclo-cross racing, I will probably be racing nearly every month in 2007. In 2008, probably only get a true break in February.

As for now, I will be mostly focused on next year (with some diversions for cross, of course) with a heavier emphasis on weight training for the next month or so. Currently, I am on week #7 of a 4 month long program. The current mode is 4×10 for the sets consisting mostly of multiple muscle group exercises using a barbell (i.e. front & back squats, good mornings, lunges, straight leg & reg. deadlifts, bench press, upright & bendover rows, etc). Andrea, with her background in powerlifting and her sports science education, has provided the template for this and we are both working through the program at the same time. I can already see I am getting stronger and leaner while maintaining a similar body weight. The addition of weight training (which I haven’t done since 2001-2002 winter really), plus some more specific work on the bike in the late winter should make more ready for racing Category III next year.

I am also due to get some new parts to work on my cross bike early this week. I am going to replace the 3rd eye chain watcher thing with a different brand that seems more substaintial and easier to clamp on my Cannondale (the down tube is very oversized on my XS800, so it was hard to tighten the hose clamp on the 3rd eye). I also go an inner chain ring guard and extra long bolts coming in, which might be the way I tame my chain on my single ring setup in any case. I’ll post up photos, etc once I get that together. I need to get that going for the race this weekend. Outdoors, Inc is having their annual Mud Island cyclocross race this Sunday (11/11).