January Training Days: Train Hard, Eat Well & Create Purpose in All That You Do

As the post title implies, January is a focused month, a time where the hustle and bustle of the Holidays is past. January brings a certain space in the life of a cyclist for attention to all aspects of training.  For me it is always a welcome time of the year.  There's a certain freshness with each New Year, an openness and intoxicating sense of optimism.  January 2012 sees me being able to focus on training 100% as my off-season stint of real-world career work has passed in the whirl-wind it was.  The pace of life has again slowed to that of my 'athlete life'.

January is also a time of overload, a time to start stressing the systems again.  And then recovering just to do it all over again.  It's a fascinating and intriguing process and from my endorphin-jacked state, I can honestly say I love every moment of it.  I am supper happy, and thankful, to feel healthy and strong which was not the case last year.  In fact, in all my years of racing, I feel better than I ever have at this time of the year.

Below are a few snippets of my past week of training.  This year I will spend the entire month of January training from home which does have its comforts, even if the thermometer reads a little lower than I'd care for it to and there are days where the roads hide beneath a blanket of snow, necessitating training in the garage on the rollers.

View from the 1st lookout on Cypress, looking over UBC toward Vancouver Island.

Same location, ,but looking east toward Mt Baker.  As it was our third consecutive day without rain, or snow, the air is a bit brown.  A little scroungy, but still a nice view.

2 degrees, fine for the climb up but a wee bit nippy for the descent.  I'm happy enough training in 2 degree weather though as long as it's dry and I have my hand and toe warmers stuffed inside my mitts & booties!

I noticed this along Broadway on my way home from my Lion's Bay, Cypress training ride.  Checkout the sign in the window-  oh yes, I love Trader Joe's too!  We don't have Trader Joe's in Canada but clearly this place is either owned by a fellow TJ's-loving-cyclist or some other like-minded Canuck.  The sign is enough to get me into their shop for sure.  Too funny.

A Biju Thomas & Allen Lim inspired quiche with bread crumb crust.  I of course took a little creative license on the recipe but did follow it pretty closely - the end product was amazing!  I received a copy of The Feed Zone cookbook for Christmas and although I haven't trialled many of the recipes yet, I'm looking forward to doing so as the pages are filled one great idea after another.  Next up are the rice ride-waffles.

Happy New Year!!

Thanks for checking in,

MoJo