After the 2 big weeks of training following our return to the UK I was feeling a bit spent so I decided to take a little bit of a rest. It was a great coincidence that Alex has organized a surprise long weekend is Spain for my birthday, which gave me a good excuse to take things easy – I only did one long run 24km while in Spain.
Upon return Alex & Audrey had another surprise in store for me with a surprise dinner and group of my friends waiting at our place hidden in the living room to jump out as soon as I came in. It was quite touching - I was speechless for the rest of the evening!
Once back from Spain I felt much better and my wattage numbers started to come back to normal. I did 3min14sec on my test hill at Crystal Palace at 324W average, which was 20 sec better than on a couple of previous attempts and almost back to where I was last year.
On Saturday I did my first race of the season - the Chertsey 3rd Cat cycling road race. The day started with nice sunshine and the forecast of 26C, which was a pleasant change from the cold and we drove to Chertsey with plenty of time to spare in time to see my teammates Lisa and Chris who were doing the women’s and the 4th Cat races respectively. Lisa did a fantastic job, coming in 3rd, but Chris unfortunately was caught up in a crash on the last lap. Before the race start I realised that in all the excitement of getting ready for the first race of the season I’ve forgotten my helmet, but fortunately Chris came to the rescue and let me use his. The race started very nervous, especially in a field of 100 riders, and I almost got dropped in the first couple of laps coming off the bend too slowly and having to chase really hard just to close the gap. After about 5 laps things have settled down a bit and I felt much more comfortable in the bunch. I even tried I little dig off the front, which lasted for all of about 200m after which I realized that I just didn’t have the legs for it and decided to sit back in the bunch. With about 3 laps to go I thought it was about time to move up near the front and sure enough I was in a good position in the top 20 with a lap to go. Unfortunately I got a bit boxed in on the final straight and by the time I had some room to maneuver the top 20 riders were gone, so there wasn’t much point in sprinting so I ended up finishing in about 55th place out of a 100 according to the official results. All in all not a bad start of the season, I did 20 laps (40 miles) averaging 41.8kph and 200W (NP 226).
A 12km run in the evening and a 130km hard ride to Ditchling with Damien rounded off a nice big 15h week of training with 63km of running, 264 km of cycling and a pathetic 2km swim.
Last week was a huge week of training – 21.5 hours with 90km running 283km cycling and 8.1 swim. Most of my running is steady state and my aerobic pace has steadily been improving and I’m almost where I was last year. 90km is pretty big for me and it left me pretty tired – I did my long run of 26km on Thursday and my legs were completely shot when I got back. Saturday was a long bike and I managed about 90M in the rain on the TT bike, averaging 186W and 20Mph. Sunday was a nice social MTB ride and as a prize for my 3 weeks of suffering I’ve managed to beat Damien up the BoxHill climb, having been beaten by him to the line on the previous two occasions on the road bike. I’ve not been up BoxHill on the road bike for a while, but I reckon I should be well under 7 min for the climb now.
Next weekend sees the 100M time trial for me which I’m not really looking forward to, but I’m just going to take it steady and use it as training for the Ironman bike leg.
