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After riding just once last week, I was desperate to get out on my bike yesterday. But I also had a weight workout on the calendar. What to do?

I found a few years back that I can still produce quality work in the weight room after hard efforts on the bike. I think it just boils down to two things:

1. Cycling is by nature an endurance workout. Even at maximum intensity, you're talking about hundreds or thousands of reps.
2. No matter how tired I am, I can still crank out a three-rep set.

So I put my trust in my experience and knowledge, and did both.

I'm well-adapted to work on the bike, so I'm not worried about bike-related fatigue and recovery interfering with my strength work. And the literature says that as long as you separate aerobic/endurance work from strength work by at least an hour, they won't interfere with each other.

I picked taller gears for the Black Cyn climb, and stood for much of it. As a result, I was nearly a minute off my PR pace. Oh well. I've been spinning the small gears long enough. Nothing left to do but click up a notch and push, even if I'm slower in the short term.

In the weight room, on the other hand, last night's numbers encouraging. I definitely got stronger over last week (same weights feel lighter), but that's to be expected at the start of a strength cycle. You gain strength fast at first, then make steady progress for a few weeks, and finally level out as your body gets inured to the workout and stops adapting.

So, we'll see how this goes. But I'm going to have to buy more weights: I deadlifted everything I own last night. (Don't be impressed. "Everything I own" weighs just 160#.) So I'm going to need more for Thursday. Nice problem to have.