Change of scenery

I received word a couple of days ago that our team was disbanding. It really wasn't a shock as I had heard rumors for a while now. For the thousands of readers of this blog, I won't go into details, but the end result is that I am team less. Actually, I had been debating not being on a team for the past several months. Since I've only done two 'road' races in the past two years to go along with my 70 time trials in the same time frame, having team mates did not help.

Anyway, I'll miss the team but I'll see the riders again (if any of them choose to do a time trial!).

So the option are:
1. Join another team
2. Do my own thing

The only team I would entertain joining at this point would be QCW, but there are things I wouldn't like about that. Again, it wouldn't help me from a racing standpoint and the only thing that would be a positive is that I could race Pur Tour and Ault Park for free. Of course, I haven't done Ault Park since I was a hotshot cat 5 who was wrecking every other week back in 2005 and I don't know that I will be able to do it in 2011.

So it looks like I am on my own. I bought a ProBikeKit skin suit and a jersey with the flag of Scotland on it so it appears I am racing for team UK. Or team Bryan if you prefer.

Now all I have to do is ride the bike. It looks like next year is going to be not so great due to schedule. I have penciled in all of the Tuesday QCW/Cleves time trial and that is it so far. This will be the first year I won't do all of the Colavita time trials. I love them, but they are just too far away for me.

Training part 3

More lifting. Been at the gym roughly 2x per week for the past five weeks. Mostly upper body but I do like the leg press. Gradually I'm getting stronger. I'm going to up the gym work to at least 3 days per week and split the work outs up instead of doing everything twice a week. This way, I won't be so tired by the end of each workout.

As far as riding the trainer goes, I've missed four days in the past 28. Riding has been nothing but going as hard as I can for 45 minutes - kind of like my races. My wattage has had a gradual increase as my overall strength is getting better. Cadence has been intentionally low as part of the new plan. Haven't done many intervals as I'm just concentrating on high overall wattage at the end of the workout.