A very pleasing early season build-up

  I don’t normally enjoy TTing this time of year, mainly because….

   …it’s so bloody cold and I’m normally wondering how on earth I could be so slow after my winter training!

  Different this year though – my two hours a week high quality training regime is paying huge dividends! Hit it really hard for about six weeks then backed right off as I've got 'ambitions' for an event on Good Friday....

  After a cautious start, a couple of full-on, tits-out, full aero rides have produced some amazingly quick rides (for me at any rate)….

Blew up massively halfway round. Doh!

Blew up at 8 miles this time - getting better!!

  Blimey!

  As hinted at last time, I’ve made a few comfort / aero upgrades too which have pretty much completed the Cosmic 2.1 reboot for 2014.

  My tri-bars were only ever supposed to be temporary when I bolted them on 4 years ago and I’ve always hated them!  I wanted to try a pair of straight ones but didn’t want to splash out for a nice set, only to find that they didn’t suit me either. So, I made a set myself! Well, modified my existing pair at any rate.

  My first experiment was on the turbo with a couple of bits of water pipe cable-tied on just to get a feel for it and to get the right length for my orang utan like arms. 

Oi, stop laughing this instant!

  Felt good on the turbo, so off to the shed with the angle grinder, bit of spare aluminium tube and TIG welder…..

  Here’s the initial result. Tada!!

  Quick blow over with a bit of spare black paint & job's a good ‘un….

  Excellent!

  Did they work? Oh yes, feel looooaaaads better – more comfy, no achey forearms, flatter back and rider as solid as a rock in TT position. Brilliant – should have done it years ago!

  The final missing piece of the puzzle is my bodyweight. I’m not exactly obese but I still have lots of annoying middle-aged wobbly bits that make me feel very unathletic.

  However, the family found a documentary on Netflix called ‘Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead’ about a couple of terminally obese blokes who lost shed loads of weight by going on a juice only diet.

 They had 3 meals a day of basically just squeezed veg & fruit juice, nothing solid, for a couple of months at a time and got down to ‘normal’ size rapidly without any of the adverse effects of usual crash-dieting like this. All their long term health problems and mountains of daily medication were banished too. Quite remarkable really although cutting all the fat out your diet is bound to have a dramatic effect I suppose.

  Anyway, that was a bit extreme for me but the family fancied a bash at it, so we bought a juicer and away we went!

  I did it for a week and, surprise surprise, I lost loads of weight. Gone was the wobbly belly and bingo wings. I noticed my armpits had gotten much smaller when washing them in the shower too!

  I didn't feel that such a huge calorie deficit was beneficial in the long term for a bloke trying to race and train so I’m doing it just a couple of times a day and then having a nice healthy low fat meal in the evening. Feels much more normal! The size I am feels fine – I’ll just try and stay at this weight.

  My taper continued and I didn’t race for a week or so but had a very long, hard 60 min threshold session at the weekend.  It felt awesome but left me feeling shredded so I rested up again for a couple of days and then headed up to Sheringham again for another bash on the B10/5. Wow….

Didn't blow up at all this time - hurrah!!

  All going marvelously! And it’s only April!

  Hopefully some major news in the next installment (and it's an anagram of 87V1…..)   ;-)