Been out of it for a couple of weeks but been hard at it training ready for Sunday. Was disappointed that the race two weeks ago was cancelled due to ice!!! (I didn't see any) but I can make amends, hopefully, in the East Surrey Hardriders event on Sunday. This is a 30mile course starting from Reigate, my old patch before I moved to the Isle of Wight 22 years ago. I wasn't a cyclist then and had barely passed my driving test so never really got out the local area so I don't actually have a clue what this course is like, even though it was on my doorstep, pretty much literally.
30miles!! For the first time ever, the thought of the distance doesn't bother me. Anything over ten miles used to put the chills up me - not sure why though, as I used to race 2hour Mountain Bike events - but since breaking out of the winter training rut of thirty minute indoor trainer sessions winter after winter I feel more prepared than ever before. Since October I've religiously ridden an hour every lunchtime (thanks Rog and Dawn), fast and slow, Monday to Thursday in all weathers as well as 50-100miles at the weekends. A quick glance at weekly hours shows almost double what I normally do in the winter months. That doesn't mean anything yet though. I'm confident, but unsure exactly what that training has done to me. I feel fit and I feel quite fast, the power is up (not as much as I'd hoped) and today I discovered my weight is about 2kg less!! (although that fluctuates more than it should)
The last three weeks I've concentrated on threshold sessions ranging from 1minute (when I'm totally hanging from previous efforts) to 35minute (fresh from the start of a session) intervals at 100-105% race power. The idea being to ride slightly over comfortable but under all-out in the hope I can raise my threshold and tolerance to pain in the most uncomfortable, prolonged discomfort you could possibly imagine in the middle of a work day!!. I can manage 35minutes at 370watts now but find I need an easier day the next day, although today I managed 6x5 minutes at 370watts and found it just doable, and that with no recovery day beforehand. Tomorrow though is commutes to work only. End of last season I was doing myself in to peak out at 365watts, but I also had a lot of races behind me and was getting tired. This Sunday will be a bit of an eye opener, the startsheet shows over 70 riders with some of the regions top time triallists on the list. If I can get top ten I will be happy, but top 15 will still be a good result. Of course, I'm hoping for better, but realistically that is going to be tough.
Anyway, its been a bit of a strange start to 2010 for me, a lot seems to have happened in such a short space of time, haven't really raced since early December (apart from the Andover event a few weeks back that really just felt like a torture session) but looking forward to the first proper race of the season; will be good to get back into some kind of rhythm.
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