"I knew I needed another rest day..."
by Alison Powers, ALP Cycles Coaching
In February ALP Coach, Alison Powers, announced that she had signed up for SBT GRVL, a 141-mile race with 100 miles on dirt/gravel roads in Steamboat, Colorado. With race day approaching, she’s been blogging every day leading up to the race. She blogs about the specifics of her training, her preparation, headspace, etc. All the things that lead up to race day that not everyone gets to see or understand.
23 days to go - Saturday, July 27th
I needed another rest day for 4 reasons
- I wanted one (no desire to ride)
- I was still tired (from the Lickskillet ride)
- I knew what was coming (ALP tour of Colorado)
- I had to finish up details for the Tour (organizing 3 days of riding for 24 people).
22 days to go - Sunday, July 28th
Day 1 of ALP Cycles Coaching tour of Colorado. The best 3 days on a road bike 
every year. This year, I was a bit selfish and scheduled the Tour exactly 3 weeks out from Steamboat. Three weeks out from an event is a perfect time to do a big training block. We have several riders on the Tour who are racing Steamboat and Leadville, so the timing is perfect (3 weeks and 2 weeks out).
Today was big and it was great training and preparation for Steamboat; 97 miles and 7,400ft of climbing. We rode from Avon to Aspen. The goal of today was to go hard, see what we were made of and how much we could handle. I got cooked. The first climb started a bit fast and I knew it was more than 1- I could sustain for 75 more miles and 2- the others could also sustain. But that’s why we are here, to see how much we could handle before exploding (i.e. to learn pacing and patience for a long event).
In addition to taking care of the Tour riders, I fit in the usual Foundation training, mobility, BCAA’s, and preload. 4 hours later I was questioning doing Foundation before a ride. While it does activate my “posterior chain” I started to wonder if it also pre-fatigued it. My back was dying today. My legs were also hurting but my back was very sore/tired and ended up being my limiter. This is discouraging, but all I can do is keep working and doing my best to get it ready to handle 8+hrs on the bike on dirt roads.
Hydration was good. Nutrition was good. Pacing was too fast to start. Headspace was good.
