I haven't raced in almost 5 years now I guess. When I left I was an Expert MTBer and a Cat 3. I got burned out and walked away. I'm a teacher so I have my summers off. I have ridden a bit here and there since quitting but nothing major at all. Last summer I rode for 2 weeks solid and did 2 crits. Finished with the back of the group in both. I think I want to see if I can get back into race shape now at 33.
I am now living in Colorado at about 8500' compared to living at about 500' before. My fitness is still pretty good. The opportunity for road riding is limited where I live. I can either head further up into the mountains or go down. Right now I am doing a ride that is 40 miles about 3x/week. Approximately 18 of those miles are a climb and they are lumped together on the way home. The grade is approximately 5%-10% the entire way. I am able to do this ride in about 2.5 hours now. Because it is so difficult to find an easier ride around here, I have been doing one hour trainer rides where I can spin and recover. I am feeling pretty good I guess although it's unbelievable the difference between then and now. For the past 2 weeks I have probably been somewhere in the 180 mile range each week. I never realized how hard it was to ride that way.
My plan right now is to simply log miles. I start work in mid August. November 1st I was going to start about 3 months of weight work and still try and get out as much as possible. I'll also do some trail running. Towards the end of March I was going to do maybe 6 weeks of interval work and see if I could come out in May and be in good enough shape to start fairly seriously again. I'd like to hear from others with similar stories and see how things went or are going. I'd also like to know if this plan sounds reasonable. Any other suggestions are welcome as well. I am 6' and am now weighing 165 so I don't need to drop any weight. Thank you for your time.
-river