Sunday 26 March 2017

Lack of volume.

I have had a really frustrating week as I have been ill again. I've been feeling very run down and supremely tired along with a gobful  of mouth ulcers.  Life has been very busy and while I have not exactly been burning the candle at both ends, I have been struggling to get enough sleep and combined with general life stress has been a bad combination nation. So this week has been a very low volume one and pretty much this weekend has been a weekend off rather than the two tts that I was entered for. Hopefully this rest break will give my immune system a chance to get a boost ready for a good block of hard training.

Race wise, I've entered the Cahlotteville 50 in May which could be a good opportunity to go under 5 hours for this distance. It's a pretty fast course so that could be a distinct possibility. I'm also thinking about the Newbury 12 hour which is quite early season and will help me get some big endurance miles before The Outlaw. I also need to do 100tt to get a BBAR qualifying time and this year the National 100 is the local Hounslow event. I'm not sure that my current best time will get me a start but I will ping off an entry and see.

Sunday 19 March 2017

First TT of 2017

At this time of year, most time trials are sporting courses (hilly) with the idea of prepping riders with a last shot of endurance before hitting the fast DC courses. There is also the odd Medium Gear event which is where riders are restricted to a 72" gear or less. I believe the idea behind this was that it would force riders to endurance spin on a fixed wheel bike. So today it was the KPRC Medium gear 25m tt. Thankfully, I didn't need a fixie to ride but just had to ensure I didn't change out of my selected gear. It was also stupidly windy this morning so my plan was to hit the hills hard knowing that I wouldn't be able to spin downhill without a lot of bouncing in the saddle, and these would therefore be enforced rests anyway.

It turned out to be an ok ride. I ended up third behind Dale and Simon. To be fair I was quite a long way back behind them both with Simon catching me about 2 miles from the finish. But bearing in mind that my last few long rides have been pretty rugged , I was feeling a lot stronger and I am gradually clawing back some fitness after my couple of bouts on manflu. I was able to keep up quite comfortably with Simon on the couple of hills I followed him up but I just didn't have the gearing or leg speed on the flats and I was bouncing all over the saddle which was decidedly uncomfortable. Next weekend is a 10 on the Saturday and a 25 on the Sunday if I can get a pass for Mother's Day.

Only one run this week; a gentle 4 miles after work. Need to do more.