Well, day 3 is down, and thankfully it was a less humbling day.  Today’s workout primarily consisted of some one leg pedaling drills and a few bouts of extremely high cadence pedaling surrounded by some soft pedaling for warm-up, recovery, and cool-down.  Due to the nature of the workout, I was able to take care of it on my commute home (I did the one leg drills on the loop by my house, so I wouldn’t have to worry about wobbling into traffic), meaning a nice relaxing evening at home.  Which is nice, since my quads are still on fire from those damn, dirty Hindu squats yesterday.

So, now that the recap is done, I suppose I should address why exactly I’m doing the 90 Day Fitness Blaster in my efforts to get ready for the Tour du Rouge?  Well, there are two main reasons.

For one thing it was put together by Graeme Street and was built on his Cyclo-CLUB/Cyclo-CORE principles, ad those are the principles that got me through last year’s Lone Star Ride, and are the principles I’ll be turning to to perform even better in this year’s edition.  So there’s trust there.  I believe that the Cyclo-CLUB principles are sound, and I firmly believe that if I follow the plan to the best of my ability, I will be a stronger more ready rider in time for the tour.

But in addition to that, of all the programs Graeme and Cyclo-CLUB offer, this one seems to be the best suited for this particular ride.  The TdR is a long, but flat ride that will be rolling out at a moderate pace (likely averaging 15 MPH including the stops).  I won’t need to worry about climbing (last years reports indicate that the biggest climb on the entire ride was a bridge — hardly Ventoux), I don’t need to reach any particularly high speeds, and power for race style accelerations is right out.  What I need is to be able to stay in the saddle for long stretches and maintain a constant moderately high cadence at low power for six days.  And that’s just what this plan provides.  It starts by building an aerobic base and the neuromuscular ability to maintain high cadence pedaling, and addressing core and functional strength. Then it reenforces that base throughout the program, while building upon it by working in first pedaling strength for endurance in the big rings at speed, and finally by working in some anaerobic endurance (so I can get across that bridge when I find it).  By the end of this program, I ought to have a much stronger core, with better flexibility, allowing me to stay in the saddle for six long days, and I ought to have the long-term endurance to keep up to the expected speed for the duration.  It’s just what I need.

And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that since I started this week it will end just in time for the Tour du Rouge to start.  So the timing works out too!