Yet again it’s been a good few weeks since my last blog. Time flies when you’re… in training! During the sessions I must admit it does linger a bit especially if you’re doing efforts at near 100% race effort – you try not to look down but what seems over 5 minutes is pretty much 30 seconds during!
Anyhoo, alot has happened in the past few weeks so here’s a quick catch-up as far as events are concerned…..
Saturday 23rd March – Milton Keynes Bowl – 3rd/4th cat race. Unfortunately for me the circuit was swapped round the other way (longer incline) and they added the technical “round the car park” bit too so 200% out of the corners was on the cards, something this style of training does not include so it was pretty clear I was going to be unstuck sooner or later. Adding to this that I was on my winter bike as the local bike shop had my replacement frame but had no workshop time to rebuild it. I forgot to change the brake blocks so braking was very noisy and very inefficient so I was at the back of the bunch before i knew it. Oh….and some pretty handy juniors were riding it too. Yep, after about 20 minutes of full-on effort I popped and subsequently got lapped. I latched on again and suffered until the end of the race dangling off the back, at least it was a good training session I guess but I did vow not to come back again unless I did some crit-style training beforehand.
Sunday 31st March – DAP CC Road Race. Coming 2nd place the last time I rode this circuit as a 3rd cat did mean I gave myself alot of pressure coming into this race. The pressure was eased somewhat by team mate – Louis going off the front from the gun leaving my to play an all-familiar role as team mate blocking & chasing anything that went up the road after him. He succumbed to his efforts after an hour and it was down to a bunch sprint. I held position well throughout the build up to the gallop, however a very untimely near-crash on the penultimate corner with an Audi driver coming the opposite direction mean I had to hit the brakes and then do my sprint effort to get back into contention. With no sprint legs left I came in at 12th position. Not to be sniffed at considering we’d left 20+ riders behind the peleton and only a handful were left to contend the sprint from the original 60 starters.
Saturday 13th April – Paris-Roubaix Sportive. This was definitely on my bucket list and as it coincided with my birthday the following day it had to be done. Suzy came with me and we both rode the 176km full-length version. The 3:30am alarm call, the bus journey from 5-7am to Busigny and then the six and a half hours of hell (but fun) mix of Pave and road was quite a day indeed. Suzy & I rode our own speeds and we met at the end in the iconic Roubaix Velodrome to have a beer and some Frites & Mayonnaise. All I can say is nothing prepares you for the cobbles. Don’t even think local town centre cobbled streets. Think stones bigger than bricks, each with a minimum of a 1-inch gap between them. Each stone jutting out in different directions. Try that – for 56kms of the 176km route. Broken up into 29 sections, some varying from 300 metres to 3.7km, the majority of which were 2-3 km long. Each had it’s own “star-rating”. One star being easy and five star being horrific. The first sector – number 29 (the descend to the finish) was 3 stars and I though “well this is going to be ok”. By the time I got to the end of this 700m section I couldn’t see peroperly as my eyes were literally bouncing in their sockets – that didn’t set me up mentally for the rest of the sectors including the legendary Arenberg and Carrefour five star sectors!
Nonetheless, we both did it, in the alotted time and had the chance to finish in the velodrome as the professionals did the next day. We were lucky enough to get front-row positions in the middle of the velodrome on the grass the next day and I had the priveledge to watch Philippe Gilbert (my favourite rider) win it.
This kind of effort did put me in the red a bit for a few days and I was victim of a cold for 3-4 days after this event where all training had to stop. Simon wasn’t as excited about it as me as the Paris Roubaix ride wasn’t really specific to the training I needed to do in order to complete Half-Ironman events on the horizon.
Friday 19th April – Great Yarmouth “Good Friday” 10 mile TT. Not really my cup of tea to be fair but old habts die hard and I entered this race with Suzy just for a bit of fun and if anything else a short & intense workout. Unfortunatley my old TT brain kicked in and I somehow manged to convince myself I could appraoch it like I used to – go as hard as possible and try not to fall apart before the end. Unfortunatley, due to the cold earlier in the week. The Paris Roubaix legs still there and the overall load of half-ironman triple-discipline training in my body it last about 7 minutes before my body said no. I eased off but had to ride fairly hard to get a good time recorded. This process of having to slow down, then cruise, then try and hold some reasonable amout of effort was the story for the next 20 minutes and I finally came across the line with a time of 25:32. For some that’s a respectable time but for me it was embarassing. So much so I turned into aa introvert almost instantly and sat the car whilst everyone celebrated their own times (and some) by beating me comprehensively. Suzy was great, as always, remindig me of all the variables I mentioned earlier but that racing brain still thinks it can do those types of performances, even without the training 🙁
Sunday 28th April – East Coast Triathlon. Just for a bit of fun I had another go at this, instead of last year where I entered the busy Saturday evening event, I entered the Sunday morning event. By the looks of it many others did the same thing so there were many familiar faces on the startline. The weather was quite bad – 20mph crosswinds, showers and temperatures around 9c kinda made it daunting to start with as I only had a sleeveless tri-suit. In fairness as soon as I was out of the pool and running across to transition i braced myself for the cold but my race brain was on 100% so i didn’t have time to think about anything else. The wet roads put pay to a PB bike effort, isntead I navigated the u-turns like and elderly man and just concentrated on the 4minute efforts between roundaboouts. Onto the run and I learnt my mistake from last year by going off too hard and eased myself into it and graduallt lifting the pace. In the end i got 9th place, some 3 minutes down on the top-3 who were all GB athletes so can’t complain really.
So…..as far as the training in between these events has been going. My swimming of 3x3k session per week comprising of speed, distance and strength specific sessions have meant my swimming has improved quite alot. Not “olympic hopeful” improved but a good 15-20 seconds off per 100m which is pretty handy going into the race season.
My bike training has been going well too, I’ve ridden with club mates alot more this year and I’m finding it’s good to be pushed sometimes. Other times I jusy have to do my own thing as Ironman training is quite specific and it’s hard to do that in a group. I’ve sat indoors on the turbo trainer and i’ve gone outside and ridden 80 miles solo so I’m ok with the distance. Maybe not top-end, as Good Friday illustrated but as far as 90km at a set level is concerned i’m all good.
Running has missed a couple of key sessions due to my cold a few weeks back but I’m all good with the thought of a half-marathon at the end of Majorca 70.3 in a couple of weeks’ time. I’ll do a session later this week at that distance at a steady pace just to get the legs used to it but I think i’ll be fine.
With Majorca 70.3 just a few working days away it’s time to get my race-brain engaged and think about every session from here on in to be as specific as it can be tapering to this event. Although Almere may be faster in September – due to it being pretty flat, i’m still looking at this one as my favourite due to the fact I love cycling in Majorca and some of the bike route covers my favourite iconic roads of this island. Lets hope the weather is better than recent weeks – I don’t want another Barcelona!
