The open road at last

An up-and-down weekend, or to be more accurate, a down-and-up weekend.

Finally blessed with some dry weather, it was a good weekend to get on the bike. On Saturday I drove to Richmond Park to have a ride with Emily (who is also signed up for the Etape - did I mention that? No? Oh...) and complete a 3-lap time trial to see if all the work on the turbo trainer had paid off.

Unfortunately, after a leisurely warm-up lap, I had to abandon towards the end of the 2nd lap with a bad cramp in my right hamstring. Felt like a waste of the great conditions.

Today the hamstring felt fine, so I took the incredibly brave decision to man up and embark on a ride down to Surrey. Felt good until the hamstring started to twinge after the climb up to the Epsom downs. I was riding with my saddle 5mm lower to see if that was the problem (having raised it a couple of months ago by the same amount), but that had apparently made no difference, so I tried to analyse what I was doing on the bike to see if I could spot the problem.

It didn't take long. I realised that after an out-of-the-saddle effort, I was trying to give more comfort to my calves by cycling with my knees sticking out. Essentially, I looked like this:

Once I moved my knees into line, everything felt fine. Need to study David Millar's technique more.

Main climbs today were Ranmore, Crocknorth Rd and Box Hill. The output from my HR monitor showed that I paced these climbs just right.

Stats for the ride were:

Distance: 89km
Time: 3:48 (was desperate to get under 4hrs)
Average Speed: 23.3km/h
Total Climbing: 1,373m

Really happy with this effort. Even a puncture at the top of Box couldn't put a downer on the day.

As a footnote, Santa visited me during the week with a late Christmas present. I have been a good boy:

The Shimano Dewey-Decimal System

Indexing gears appears to take the same amount of patience as safe-cracking. Or trying to get the temperature right in the shower. Getting it right is equally rewarding though (well, maybe not as rewarding as safe-cracking)

23 weeks to the Etape. Might actually get to go outside on the bike this weekend.

Another hour on the turbo trainer yesterday evening in the company of the 'Angels' video (not the Robbie Williams dirge) - nearly collapsed off the bike. Can't decide whether this is a good thing.

Tick-tock, tick-tock...

6 weeks until my first sportive of the year. Desperate to get out and put the miles in, but the weather is conspiring against me, so it's more sweaty sessions on the turbo trainer instead.

30 mins high tempo spinning today, resulting in an average HR of 85% of maximum

Winter training is so dull...

The ice and snow has arrived, so it's been indoor training this week (and probably this weekend) apart from a 7.5mile run home (an expected slow time). I followed a good interval training session on Wednesday (5 max heartrate sprints) with a spin session using a Sufferfest video. This tries to replicate attacking climbing on the turbo trainer and beats just spinning by quite a margin.

As the graph below shows, I managed to get the heartrate up (103% of max at one point) and sustain it for increasing bursts. I sweated a lot (uurrrggghhhh.... need to buy a fan - but who sells them in the winter?!?!?)

Hopefully my cycling fitness has benefitted from these sessions, but the only method I have for testing my output is to complete a 3-lap TT around Richmond Park, which could be more than a week away. Desperate to do a longer ride down to Surrey too.

Hey ho

Back to baby steps...

Really didn't fancy braving the cold, damp morning on Saturday, but I got onto the bike for some laps of RP. Meant to do 3 laps to see where my fitness was, but a combination of lethargy from the remnants of sunstroke, a few glasses of white wine on Friday night and an intermittent cramp in my hamstring meant I did only 2 laps in the pretty unspectacular times of 23 mins and 24.5 mins before rolling home with my tail between my legs.

Managed to follow this up a full hour of interval training on the turbo this morning, so hopefully I'm back travelling in the right direction.

A bit of running and more turbo sessions this week

2013 - Time to get serious...

Well, 2013 is here, so now the hard work begins. Had 3 weeks off the bike while holidaying in Burma. This could turn out to be a double-edged sword however, as though I have undoubtedly lost some of my pre-Christmas fitness, the break was very welcome and will hopefully allow me to refocus my training, especially with my first sportive in 2 months time.

I say I had 3 weeks off the bike, but that's not strictly true:



Beats most warm-weather training camps. Although the terrain was uber-flat, pedalling through sand does do a little for the climbing muscles.

Also, getting heatstroke and it's resultant symptoms did has allowed me to get my weight down to 76.1kg. Given that this is massively unsustainable and more unhealthy than bulemia, I'd expect to get back some of the losses over the coming month!