Fit fast!

The season starts NOW!

I have the first TT of the season coming up in a few weeks time and I am finding I am hiving to think about the fit and fast concept.

Basically I have to ensure I am fit enough to race and hopefully be in with a chance of bettering my previous time on the course. The Fast comes from not just the top end I have to achieve but also the average speeds that I need to be clocking.

I have moved house recently to a fab old house near Glossop. I am still working in the centre of Manchester and I cycle too and from work up to 4 times a week.

https://www.strava.com/activities/900855385

As you can see I have a fairly big hill in the way as I ride over Mottram Moore in the morning.

The return journey is a steady climb back again followed by a very rapid decent down the hill, usually passing cars as I punt along the way.

The net worth of all this has resulted in a moderate increase in my fitness levels but not quite at the peak I had last year.

To my surprise however I am far fitter than I was this time last year, plus I am almost as fit as I was the last time I raced as well.

The biggest problem I have at the moment is not getting enough time on the bike to drive up my fitness levels. Hopefully that will change as I have several good routes planned plus I am going to sort out getting back on the turbo/rollers in the garage to push it all hard.

So am I ready?

I will only be able to tell that on the day!

The course itself is a masochistic killer over the lumpier parts of the local area run by Glossop Kinder velo and organised by Mark Nulty, who in his own right is probably the highest performing and fastest rider in not just our club, but most of the area as well. He really is fast!

Anyway the course itself is a real killer.

The course starts at Glossop Fire Station and goes out of Glossop over Chunal, it then goes through Hayfield and towards Buxton before turning towards Sparrowpit and taking you through stunning scenery to the top of Edale before a fast descent towards Chapel-en-le-Frith and then back into Glossop the way you came, the event finishes just after the summit of Chunal. At 25.6 miles and with 3000ft of elevation it’s not for the faint hearted!

Last year it hurt me lots!

This year will without doubt be no different just hopefully a bit faster!

I will post my update as to how it all goes after the race on April 9th

Until then, Sweating lots and riding hard it is!

Happy days...

Training up!

It's a Zwift kick in the pants

For anyone that has ever trained on an indoor cycle trainer you will know it is the most boring thing known to man. Just think of running on a treadmill, then put the treadmill on a slope and go as hard as possible. I am not saying that running is easier than cycling (by any stretch), I just find cycling you can push yourself harder and further.

My first road bike attached to my first Turbo Trainer

So initially when I first bought a Turbo trainer I would watch TV and leave big puddles of sweat on the living room floor (to the annoyance of "The Wife"). 

Then to give my workout a bit of structure I bought a cycling trainer DVD to watch. At first this was great, however once you have watched the same footage a few times it becomes a bit dull.

Then I tried having a go at some of the Suffer Fest  training video's. At the time they could be bought by the download or as a physical DVD. These are a bit more expensive and suffer from the same downfall as the previous. 

On the subject of Suffer Fest, they are actually really good sessions and now they have an app that effectively streams the videos online for a cost of £X per month it's a good option. 

For me, the discovery of Zwift was brilliant. it effectively allows you to ride in a traffic free virtual world. You can ride or even race with others and anyone from around the world. With a mix of Watopia (the Zwift Virtual island in the south east Pacific), London (because everyone in the UK lives in London.... apparently!) and Richmond in the States (UCI World Championship course). 

Now Zwift was and has been out for some time before I started playing it / using it for training. I did have to acquire a few things before I could play though. 

1. A laptop that could run it. (my old steam powered windows 98 machine just didn't cut the mustard at the time. 

2. Speed and Cadence Ant+ sensors for my bike plus an Ant+ dongle to plus into my laptop.

All this allows the physical world of me smashing away on the pedals to be translated (via a very funky software link etc.) into actions in the virtual Zwift world. Mainly my little dude on a bike pedalling faster etc. You can (and I would love one) get "Smart trainers" that not only measure your power output but also give feedback i.e.when you get to a hill the resistance increases going up hill or decreases going downhill! Magic!

I put a bit of a "spin" on all this and made things a little bit harder for myself along the way. Instead of using a traditional fix your bike to a roller type of turbo trainer, I went for the rollers idea. Ease of use for 1 as I really couldn't be bothered changing my rear wheel every time I wanted to use my trainer. Plus as anyone who has ever ridden on rollers would know, it is a bit of a skill and it great for your smoothness/balance on the bike. 

It does make for a bit of comedy viewing too when you are learning to get the hang of things. I regularly still fall off mine, nowadays more due to getting sweat in my eyes more than anything.

That's me in the green :)

Riding on Zwift using Rollers is a bit of a skill too. Bearing in mind that your character may be dodging and weaving around other cyclists, or cornering at bends/junctions etc. The trick is not to try and do this in the real world. When your road is effectively only 2 foot wide and you can only go straight on.

Other things like drinking and using a towel to get rid of the offending perspiration can also be a bit of an issue. I did also have an epic dismount fail one night too managing to fall into the coffee table and badly bruising my back one night. 

Standing and/or sprinting can be a bit twitchy too. I was surprised when I realized how much I obviously moved my bike when I do either. Still a skill I have to fully get to grips with. 

So Smooth is the key, or at least that is what I am finding. despite the setbacks and comedy moments/falls etc. I am finding that my pedaling is getting smoother and I am becoming stronger/faster as a result. 

So comedy falls and having a limited ability to sprint isn't stopping me from having fun and really wracking up some miles in the virtual world.

It's been a while!!!

It has been quite some time (about 2 years) since I even looked at the blog I started in 2015. A whole 2 years of training and racing has happened since then.

For me it's been a whole world of change and lots of lessons learn't. 

The simplest being that I can't effectively train by pushing myself to the limits all the time 7 days a week. Body mind (and legs), eventually get too tired and give up. The result of which being that I end up being far less fit and on worse form than I was before.

Highlights from 2016

There were a few highlights to the year for me. One of the best rides I have ever done (on my own) was around the lake district and included Hardknot and Wrynose. these two epic climbs being ranked quite high in the hardest in the UK's top 100 (by Steven Warren)

Hardknot - Wrynose

(see this in Strava by clicking on the link above)

This was indeed an epic day out!

On the racing side of things I didn't do too well. I kind of gave up on circuit racing as there just seemed to be a few too many crashes going on for my liking. 

I did however get more into Time Trialling with some quite respectable times (for me) over distances of 10, 25 and 50 miles. 

And with me smashing myself around the Cheshire Plains on a regular basis I was able to even start to look the part (at least).

One aim for me this year is to buy a proper Time Trial bike and really start to achieve something.

One of the best racing highlights to my year must have also been the Glossop Kinder Velo hill climb that I took part in. 

After an ok ride in 2015 riding up Snake pass to my time in 2016 in which I knocked off exactly a minute. The hill climb itself was really good fun (on the way down anyway). For 19-20 minutes of suffering, I felt great afterwards and this year I am aiming to do even better.

2016 Snake Pass Hill Climb

Aims for 2017

My aims for 2017 are more on the racing but also I want a record distance for the year too. 

Racing wise I want to TT more, this will be a long hard process but hopefully I will be able to improve my times through a period of hard training over the winter period.

I do regularly ride my arse off on my rollers using Zwift as my training tool of choice.

With regards to distance, I want to ride 10,000km (6,214 miles) in 2017. Thankfully miles ridden on Zwift do count.

So all in all it's going to be a hard year of suffering to look forward too. Combined with the commuting I still do by bike, hopefully it should be fun.

Happy travels :)

Starting with baby steps.

The start of the year for me is getting back into some sort of training program. For me this also includes commuting the 18+ miles a day and as I don't want to kill off my race bike, I am doing it on my hybrid. 

Not an easy task at all. With close to 100 miles just in commuting a week on a B'twin bike made from lead piping it can burn the legs a little. However as so many seem to say "train heavy and race light!". It does make sense in a way but I still miss commuting at high speed. 

I have upgraded my groupset on my race bike to a full matching Shimanio 105 10 speed groupset. I would love to be able to upgrade my wheels but I can't see me being able to afford that anytime soon. 

In all my bike is just over 9kg, which is heavy for a race bike and will put me at a slight disadvantage. So the way I will be making up for this is by smashing myself to death training. 

At the young age of 37 I am seen and licenced as a senior! AKA they may as just well give me a blue rinse and pack me off to the retirement home. So it's not like I am going to be hacking out a living at a pro level anytime soon, however it is still going to be fun. 

So far I have 3 100 mile sportives planned in and around the start of the season, plus I will be entering into the Tameside closed circuit racing league. That means racing on a Tuesday night.  Also I am looking at a few more local road races depending on how I do.

Until then it is going to be a hard package of interval and sprint training, mixed with a smattering of endurance and (comparative) medium distance training. 

This week along with a quick test of my new setup, I have managed to cover 100 miles plus 1 turbo session of 30 minutes. Not a massive start to the year as yet again I had a terrible cold over Christmas and New Years. 

Monday 12th is day 1 of an 8 week Strava training plan. It may work, but in all honesty I think anything is better than nothing at this stage. Irony has it though that even though it's day 1 it is a rest day. Does my commute count. Perhaps I need to not actually count any of my commutes. We shall see how it goes. 

Back on the bike again!