I’m now into my 6th week of Tour du Mont Blanc training, which means I’ve done two ‘blocks’ of two weeks and I’m now on my 2nd recovery week. I’m still questioning whether the 2-week/1-week program is the way to go because I’m not feeling very fatigued, but I’ll stay with it and do a little more on the recovery weeks till stuff gets real in a month or two.

I’ve been good about following the program so far and am up to 12-hour weeks. This will quickly become something resembling work because I’m going to increase around an hour every two weeks. My longest ride so far has only been 100km (4 hours), but in my next cycle/block I’m going to try to get in a 5-hr ride; something I haven’t done in a while, outside guiding tours.

Above: Our Lady of Winemakers does indeed keep a water tap next to her for thirsty cyclists (see last post).

Remember VAM? I’m trying to keep an eye on this on the few climbs I’m doing right now. I think I’m doing okay with this and staying over the all-important 600. VAM seems to change with gradient, perhaps because of wind resistance, so I’m getting lower numbers on 5% than 7%, for example. Once I get into the Cévennes for some proper climbs I’ll know better how VAM deficient I really am.

This is not very insightful I suppose, but before I started the program on January 1st, I was really focusing on the event in July – mainly the stupid length of it and the energy I’d need just to finish. Now that I’m over a month into training, I’m find myself more interested in what I’m doing on the bike…the ‘process’. Like most things in life, fear and anxiety is heightened when you aren’t doing something about it. Once you act, it dissipates.

That being said, on my recovery weeks I’ve determined to take another look at the overall program and guidelines for TMB, so I don’t lose sight of what I’m doing it all for. It could very be, for example, that I’m not riding enough, or that Zone Two is not working for me, or I’ve forgotten to stretch or roll around on the mat doing core work. For now it’s just nice to get out and ride half the day and be able to justify it to myself!