Quite ridiculous really!

  It’s official, I give up….

   No, no, not cycling, but trying to understand how my body works!

  Not really ridden for a month but, with all the sunny weather and everything, I felt the urge to get out a few times this last 10 days or so.  In fact 4 times. Had a short local ride first time out of about an hour or so and felt, well, ‘rested’ if nothing else.

 2^nd ride was a brisk ride round my sporting 50 mile route a couple of days later which, to my astonishment, I PB’d by over 15 minutes (To be fair, I was absolutely shredded when I got home, lying on the lawn for a while & stuffing half a packet of Nice biscuits down me cakehole to recover!)

  Then a really hard 1hr 15 min blast three days later around another short local route which I also PB’d by a considerable margin. For the first time in what seemed like decades, I had that strange feeling of going really fast on a useful heart rate but felt like I was hardly pressing on the pedals at all.  This was last Friday.

  At this point, I thought about entering a TT asap to see how the form really was so I targeted the club TT on the following weds evening, seeing as I had the whole day off that day.

  No riding over the Bank Holiday weekend (work – boo…) but a restrained 90 min steady ride at around 130-135 bpm on Monday morning as a bit of a taper.

  Spent my whole day off lying under cars welding, then a quick shower to get the Underseal out of my hair and off to the TT.

  Knew it was going to be a decent ride as soon as I got on Trigger and started pedaling.  Had an easy 20 minute warm up (which didn’t feel hard enough – turbo next time) then off to the start.

  A very, very controlled start. HR 155 for the first 3 minutes, legs felt crap due to poor warm up. Ah well. HR allowed up to 160-162 for the next 10 minutes or so. Hard to tell how well I was going as the course is a twisty, rolling, rural 5 mile circuit.

  First lap in almost exactly 12 minutes. A nice surprise!

  I pressed the self-destruct button for the last five miles and let the HR up to 172 and found myself going a couple of mph quicker in places second time around.

  Nine miles – tits out!

  ½ a mile to go and my vision went funny – always a good sign! Big sprint to the finish (which I’m not able to do that often) and over the line in 23:31. A course PB by about 30 secs I think.

  Again, I hadn’t thought I’d gone that hard but I was a bit unsteady on my feet after the finish and had to have a few moments, bent double, hands on hips, breathing out of my arse type of thing. Yep, I’d gone flat out alright!!  To be able to do that to myself is quite a rarity – everything must be very healthy in the old engine room at the moment.

  I’ve always found that the perception of effort during a ride is a good indicator of form.  You don’t feel like you’re going that mad at the time, it feels easy but your HR is telling you otherwise. It’s a great feeling. I mean just brilliant.

  I’d thought my season was a write off but now it looks like my ambition to mount a late summer campaign is still alive and well. The quest for that elusive 20 minute 10 is on based on that ride - It's still only my 2nd race of the year after all so I will get quicker.

  Still too busy at work for a while to contemplate entering Opens (I’m working a lot of weekends and would have to take leave to ride sat & sun events at the mo), but should calm down end of June, July & August.

  So, my pre-season has gone like this:

  Oct & Nov - two really hard 3 hour rides a week.

  Dec & Early Jan – Really bad case of flu / cold. No riding for about 5 weeks.

  Late Jan – Mid March – 5-6 hours hard road / turbo stuff a week.

  Late March to Late April – Another flu / cold thing. Nearly 4 weeks of no riding.

 

  A regime to remember for next year I think! The key thing is undoubtedly all the time off the bike between big training blocks, although I obviously didn't plan it. Interesting....

  To be honest, I’ve finally realised just how little quality training I actually need to do. Those sporadic hard 6 hours a week over the winter have given me a really solid platform to work from, although I hated it at the time! I think even that might have been a bit too much actually.

  In fact, I’m becoming convinced that a lot of club racers like me do far too much training and spend most of their racing weekends still knackered.

  From now on, I'm letting my body decide my training and racing programme. I don't think 'me' is particularly good at it!