Ripping your legs off in the off season.

For some reason, the off season is no longer the off season...
I finished putting on my new tire from yesterday's weird blowout, just in time for the 12:30 noon ride. A few people had emailed saying they would not be coming. James emailed saying he would be doing some tempo workout. What "tempo" meant to him was probably different to me. Again, my training vocabulary is limited... So what I thought tempo was, a medium speed ride. Now that I got home and looked it up on the internet: Tempo target defined by Polar HR is when you're at 70-80% of max hr and is good for improving cardiovascular fitness. Another website: http://www.endurancefactor.com/article-zone.htm noted that it was 90% of your Lactate Threshold. I think James was focusing on the second.
I had done an early morning leg workout of squats, leg press, leg extensions and leg curls with a little bit of stomach and back workouts too. I'm beginning to think these aren't going to help me because I'm probably not doing the right thing as I need to build endurance and not really strength. Strength, I believe I have already. Remember, I'm a sprinter, so I can power the pedals and gears pretty hard. It's up the long hills that I have a problem with as well as keeping up with the break away and doing my share of the work. I'll have to re-evaluate my weight training program (it's not that structured yet).
Anyway, thinking that this would be a regular paced noon ride, it started out at a quick pace with James leading the way. Well it stayed that way and soon the usual suspects (Ad, Paul and Steve) started picking up the pace. We were also joined by Adrian and his brother Shawn and the rest of their contingent. By Kentsdale Drive, the pace up the hill was decently fast. I even took a pull for a bit, thought I quickly tired. Ad, Paul, Steve, James all blew by me and I started to scramble for the last bit of draft I could muster. Shawn and Adrian were there as well so I knew if I fell back I would still have some help. Well it continued hard, I seemed to hover around 175-180 beats/s on my HR monitor. I think that's definitely in the range of my lactic acid threshold. I really don't know where my max HR is. During a sprint I think I can get it to max somewhere around 204 b/m. I've seen it higher, but it's probably a fluke. Anyway, we continued hard through Potomac and back down MacArthur then down on Clara Barton Parkway. I couldn't believe it, there was James, Ad and Paul pushing the pace. I was struggling to do my work pulling through and a few times I just couldn't muster the power to do so. Anyway, I was pretty much toast at the end of Clara Barton. Ever since the last rainy ride and I screwed my seat height, I haven't felt that I've been in the proper form anymore. I don't know whether it is the weight training I've started or the positioning on the bike or because I've caught a cold or simply too much partying. It could be a combination of all of them, however I got my legs ripped apart today by the usual riders and it wasn't even a hill ride day either.
Either way, I guess it's good to feel depleted sometimes. One thing is for sure, James is an animal, plus as I wrote before, he's one of the guys who still rides the 32/36 spoke wheels with a Cromoly frame and no carbon on that bike. He's proof that you can still race with the older stuff and not the fancy tricked out bikes.