After a successful trip to the USA Cycling Elite Road National Championships, I headed back to Wisconsin for the rest of July. It was a quiet month of training, which you might not expect with the premier virtual racing season only a few months away. But I had already put in a lot of hours between Zwift World’s in February and the present day – the base was there, and now it was time to add some intensity.
My summer training schedule consisted of 2-3 days of high-intensity intervals or races each week. Now, I don’t recommend this as a coach, because there’s a delicate balance between gaining fitness and burning out with this much intensity. Coach Alex Coh helped me maintain that balance, and I know that I am better because of him.
I took a rest week every third or fourth week, which meant halving my training volume and doing one day of high-intensity training (maybe).
As for the rest of my training, I focused on strength training and getting back into running. After battling a knee injury for about two months, I hadn’t run since April, and I was really missing my early morning jogs through downtown Milwaukee.
Running has been more of a mental escape than a training stimulus in the past two years, and I could really feel the difference after a few months off. To ease back into it (and minimize my chances of injury), I started the Knees Over Toes Guy training program. Perhaps you’ve heard of it before, the radical strength training style that either helps or horrifies its followers.
The KOTG program, as I like to call it, starts with extremely basic exercises. But the key is to focus on perfect form with each and every rep. After two workouts, my knee pain was gone. I was able to run two miles in my first week back, and I was thrilled. That trend has continued for the past two months, and I recently completed an 8-mile run with Eminem.
In addition to my typical training sessions, I raced on MyWhoosh most Sunday mornings at 5AM. If you’ve never heard of MyWhoosh, it’s a virtual cycling app that is trying to take the #1 spot from Zwift. MyWhoosh offers prize money races on the final Sunday of each month, and I think the total prize pool is $50,000 per month split between three categories each of men and women.
Needless to say, I’ve never done an IRL bike race with a prize list like that, so to chase it from the comfort of home is a crazy experience. Unfortunately, the prize money only goes to the Top 5 individual riders (my best if 7th) and the Top 5 teams (my team’s best finish is 5th). So I have yet to break into the top echelon of MyWhoosh, but I’m certainly trying.
At the end of July, I packed everything in the van and drove to Asheville, North Carolina for the first-ever NeXT eSport pb Enshored Team Camp. It was my first time meeting all the guys in real life, and I can confirm that there was not a single catfish.
To summarize team camp: we got up early, rode before the rain, climbed nearly 10,000 feet a day, and spent most of the evenings at various breweries. The riding was great, we hardly got rained on, and I couldn’t have asked for a better trip.
Shockingly – for an eRacing team – we didn’t have a single crash the entire weekend. There were two flat tires, I believe, and it only took four of us to change it. You can guess if I’m joking.
NeXT eSport pb Enshored is a very special group of guys that is genuine, supportive, and absolutely hilarious. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in eight years of bike racing, it’s that the best team isn’t just the strongest group of riders.
The best team is the group that supports each other no matter what happens. They laugh, cry, and celebrate together whether they finish first or last. They never put each other down or make each other feel guilty. Each rider gives their best effort whether they are going for the win or sacrificing themselves for the team. That’s what it takes to win, and that’s what we have at NeXT pb Enshored.
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Up next:
Endurafest (crit, elimination, and TT): August 12-13th
Bob Pfarr Classic (track): August 16th
Race the Lake: August 21st
Zwift Racing League: begins September 13th
Zwift Premier League: begins September 23rd
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