À Bloc

The V surrounds us, it penetrates and binds us together. Through disciplined practice we are able to draw from it to push harder and go farther on the bike; what we do on the bike then informs how we face our lives. The masters, such as the Prophet Merckx and the Apostle de Vlaeminck, could channel this strength to overcome the greatest challenges both on and off the bike.

The question we must always ask ourselves is, how hard is hard enough? The answer is, you go until the lights go out, and then you go some more. Today’s lesson is that if you can still stand after the effort, you didn’t go hard enough. Nice one, Laurel.

Merckxspeed, my fellow Velominati.

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62 Replies to “À Bloc”

  1. I’m starting the Build phase of training after Christmas so I’ll doing a lot more, short, very hard efforts. I’m intrigued to find out just how much I can hurt myself.

  2. Laurel is such a badass. One of my favourite young athletes to follow – her and the rest of the Raleigh-Clement and TSH crew are an amazing bunch.

  3. @Oli

    @Chipomarc

    So it’s not just me then? Aru is such a fucking gurner, it drives me nuts!

    They’d call Phil Jones the Fabio Aru of football if they knew.

  4. @mouse

    @mouse

    Cyclocross is definitely one discipline that will put you at near your heart rate limit and leave you there for the full hour if you let it. In no other efforts have I ever been able to recreate that sort of intensity over time. Long climbing efforts are hard but nowhere near as hard as CX.

    Max HR efforts lead to all sorts of fun stuff. You can get the reflux or full spew. That’s fun. I also get tunnel vision in long uphill sprint efforts.

    The interesting thing that I’ve discovered is that Max heart rate is a movable feast. It can be trained higher, much higher, even for old people like me.

    This^ I did my first cyclocross race last weekend, trained hard and am pretty good on the road. It was without doubt the hardest hour I’d ever spent on a bike, literally a lactic acid hell. I’m hooked though, can’t wait for the next one (it’s weird how that happens isn’t it?)

  5. CX HURTS! Nothing can get my hart rate pegged like a CX race! I’m sad the season is over!

  6. @frank

    @Haldy

    Does that make this, the greatest example of going hard enough, ever?

    Yes. Class dismissed.

    Yes but Hinault would have just pushed the O2 mask out of his face like Nacho Libre telling his buddy to “get that corn outta my face!”

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