Most people in cycling take a true off season, meaning they are off the bike for 2 weeks to a month, and then starting their preparation for the next spring. After reading Chris Carmichael's book on training, I have decided that I will try not taking a dedicated off season, and continue to ride all winter. This works well because most of my riding is to and from work, which I would not want to stop for fear of having to drive five days a week (which I haven't done yet since I started work!). My hope is that instead of having to work from a moth off deficit, I can use the base miles from last year to build to a strong 3's racer. The only problem that I will surely face is burn out, but after assessing my mental state (taking 5 seconds to tell my self to HTFU) I have decided that I will not burn out.
So for the off season I will be running, cycling, and doing routines of plyometrics. I learned of plyometrics from a tweet from Lance about his workouts last fall. I didn't take to them to much last year, as I was trying to work on sustained power and endurance. I was very successful at increasing this (i.e. going from last to podium in TT's), but lost a lot of my top end power for sprinting, which resulted in less than desirable finishes near the end of the year. This year, I hope that weight lifting and plyometrics early in the training season will increase that top end power.
For now, I will not use a coach. It's not really the money that would be spent on a coach, but the need to be self-reliant and have only one person to blame if my plan is unsuccessful: myself. The only problem is that I know that when I have a coach or mentor, I tend to keep on track better and not get lazy or complacent. I think these are the things that could derail my success for next year the most.
I'll plan in time to work on my ever improving golf game as well. Uncle Larry gave me a really nice set for a wedding present and I have been out 4-5 times to Memorial Park to practice already.
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