A Great Way To Waste An Opportunity.

I have never taken full advantage of the training potential Sunday mornings at the Dome present.
 
These days it's more of a social event for me, a break from the monotony of the trainer.
 
Looking at the numbers, my average Training Stress Score on Sunday is about half of what it normally is Saturdays for the same amount of time.
 
Part of it is I have less in the tank after a week of workouts. At my advanced age, I only can do so many hard days before my legs fall off. My stage race history bears this out. Sooner or later I just can't turn the pedals over.
 
In my training week, those times are Sundays.
 
I could shuffle my week around so I arrive at the Dome fresh and ready to charge, but then I would be dead for Mighty Mites. Four or five hours shepherding young skiers around Alyeska is a whole 'nother sort of exertion, and doing it with dead legs would be dangerous.
 
Richard Tilton and Joey Bacala grind out impossibly fast circuits in lane 3. The Serrano's/Fall Line Fitness group does their best Astana imitations for the glory of Kazakhstan in lanes 4 and 5. Other riders mix in or ride their own pace in lane 6.
 
I jump in when the mood strikes me. Sometimes I see how long I can hang on Richard's wheel before I explode. Others times I play with the kids doing sprint training. Most often I just ride extremely easy and enjoy the sensations associated with riding a bike that actually moves.
 
I have no plan, other than to hang out with other roadies and spend some time on the time trial bike. That second one really isn't much of a goal, since I spend a lot of time on the bullhorns near the brakes. Doing pace-line stuff in the Dome makes for some interesting situations. The grippy surface means direction changes can happen with the smallest input, and the wheel that was right in front of you a second ago can be three feet to the right in the blink of an eye. Joggers, soccer players, and other random pedestrians can dart across the lanes, and always at the worst possible places. Nobody's gone down or gotten hit, but having as much control as possible and keeping my head up and on a swivel seems like a good idea to me. I'm not interested in dropping my bike in the Dome, and the management would probably agree with my position.
 
Some guys do some serious training there. Some guys do the semi-social thing. So far the mix seems like it's working. Once in a while Richard will yell at us when we drift into his lane, but for the most part people try to be considerate of each other's goals.
 
Maybe I am wasting a golden opportunity to do some quality off-season TT training by playing around, but I'm having fun. I figure that's a little more important than doing X watts for Y minutes with Z minutes for recovery. I go hard when the mood strikes (it rarely does) and ride easy the rest of the time.
 
Having fun on the bike during the trainer season is a precious commodity, so I try to make the most of it. If I'm screwing up, that's par for the course.