Today marks the official start of my training and I am not sure if I am resigned to my (questionably sane) idea, scared of it, or revealing my extreme ignorance and naivety in going ahead.  Last weekend’s mini bike tour experiment was more to see if my psyche and butt could handle 2 back-to-back long rides.  Admittedly, the tour was “pushing it” for me at this point in my training journey.  It is cool, though, that I did it; despite the physical and psychological pain, my body is capable of grinding out a lot of miles already, albeit at a modest pace.  However, now that I am mostly recovered, I am going to start training in earnest, if not with enthusiasm, with the assistance of an actual double-century training program that maps out the number of miles per week.  I am using Bicycling magazine’s program and beginning with week 4 (out of 16).  I am not starting at week 1 because my base cycling level is stronger than that (case in point: I survived a bike tour last weekend!  According to my mileage last week, I would be starting at week 14 today!).

Week 4’s total mileage is 135 and today is scheduled to be a recovery-paced day of 11 miles.  (Mondays are typically recovery days while training because the weekends are for long, difficult, arduous, painful rides.)  The rest of this week mandates ride lengths of 16, 19, 20, and 53 miles.  Not too bad.  Since this week is Thanksgiving week, let me take a moment to be thankful for this training plan:

(clears throat): I am thankful for this training program — especially this week — because it will serve to mitigate the thousands of calories I will consume at Thanksgiving dinner.

I am also thankful that I have short rides this week.

Yeah.  Positive thinking.  See?  I AM trying here!