It seems that there is never enough time in the day to do all the things that I would like to be able to do. Between work, family, and sleep, it is hard to find time for much of anything else. To be honest the first two take up the most time, while I strive to survive on as little sleep as possible. Luckily for me, I can survive on 5-6 hours of sleep a night for about 2 weeks before I need a good 8 hours of sleep.

Most people that know me, understand that I have an almost unhealthy addiction to mountain bike riding. The unhealthy comes from the fact that I am almost always more than willing to share with others thoughts and ideas or recent rides when it comes to mountain biking. The funny thing is that I am not the fastest or the best rider out there by a long shot. The truth of the matter is that I am faster than the slow group, but not quite able to hang with the fast riders. Sure, I can keep up for an hour or two, but on longer rides I lag while they keep punching away at it.

The brings me to the topic of discussion for today. Last year I started to ride in 6 hour endurance mountain bike events. On my first race I came in dead last. Since then I have ended up in the middle of the pack slowly, but never anywhere near the top of the rankings. I have also shifted from riding a geared bike to a single speed, and from clipless to platform pedals. So, this year I want to be able to do better in the races that I am going to enter into.

So recently I found out about a program geared for mountain bikers. It is by James Wilson and is a simple Dumbell Strength program. The entire program consist of a warmup, 2 main exercises, and then a couple combos that fluctuate depending on the day. My goal is to go through this program, and to see how well it helps. While the program does not look like much, once you read through all the documents and watch the videos it answers most of your questions.

To be fair, I am in my second week of the program. I was planning on doing 3 days the first week and on every week after, but instead I only got in 2 days of the program done the first week. Having seen the videos, and then doing the work out, I am able to say that it does beat you up a bit. Overall, for a guy that does not like working out with weights, it is an easy to follow and fairly fun program. The fact that I can do it with just 2 dumbbells does not hurt either.

So the goal is to stick with it for the next 11.5 weeks, and see where it gets me. I think that it will take a couple of weeks before I know if it is going to provide great results, but only time will tell. I can say that so far so good.