Week six - rain rain go away.....

Another failed week bike wise.

The kid's away so the husband and I had high hopes of going out together every evening.  The rain has however thwarted our plans.  

It rained all day Tuesday and all day yesterday.  We had planned to go out tonight but as he got in the heavens opened and it began chucking it down again.  As I've said previously I do know that if it's raining on the day of the London 100 I will still do it but when the weather is this bad and I'm ahead of the programme it is very hard to get motivated to go out.  

I do worry though about the way I have missed training recently.  It seems to be one thing after another.  That said there is no rain forecast after today so tomorrow night we will be doing a fairly long ride, Saturday we will be doing a 3 hour route (at least) and Sunday we plan to be out again.  This will mean that I have realistically only missed 1 ride this week so that can't be bad! 

Week five - Saturday

The way the weather was this morning I didn't expect to get out today.  I know that if it's raining torrentially on the day of my sportive I will have to do it anyway but currently the idea of deliberately riding in a monsoon puts me off somewhat.

However, by about 4pm it had brightened up considerably so out I went.  I did my favourite route as I always enjoy it and to be honest I'm still not back in love with my bike yet.  

It was a good ride and as I say I always enjoy the route, especially since Ant altered it slightly, meaning I can now avoid riding along the main road.

I was really keen to try and get and average mph of 13mph.  I didn't quite manage this as you can see.

    So close!

I'm not actually worried about this however as I only decided to get this average about 2/3 of the way round!

As you know I've started the training programme four weeks early.  I think while I'm waiting  for the training programme to catch up to me I am going to really work on my speed.  I am not overtly bothered about my time at the sportive BUT it is really important I finish within the time allowed.  I am on the borderline of this at the moment so obviously with more training I should get well within it.  It will mean having to add to my tried and tested one hour routes but luckily most of them can be increased without too much thought.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of the Bsnk Holiday Weekend.

Week five - Friday

Officially a rest day today but as you know, I've missed a fair few rides this past week and a bit so I was determined to get out.

I decided to ride to Brackley and back which is more or less an hour in total.  I thought this would be a good ride as I could break it up in the middle with a coffee. 

I've done the route once before in the driving rain, which was no fun!  It has a nasty hill and the whole route feels very desolate.  

    Evil hill

The weather today was better but only marginally.  It felt really windy and the drizzle was coming straight into my face.  I struggled up the hill at a paltry 5mph and did a considerable amount of swearing.  

However, as ever, I made it to my destination and enjoyed a coffee and a flapjack in town.

The journey home was better.  Mostly due to the nasty hill now being a fun descent but all in all this was not a ride I enjoyed.

    Much easier on the way down

I will have to try it again when the weather is better to see if it's the route or the weather that is putting me off! 

Week five - Thursday

Just a tiny ride today to get me back into after being poorly.

I only went up to the end of the road and to the village hall to vote, probably about five miles.

We spent the majority of the evening trying to set up the Trail Gator we have bought to try and help Ellie learn to ride.  I'll tell you more about it another time.  I have high hopes for it though!

Anyway, at least I'm getting back into it.  I hope to go out tomorrow on a longer ride and then again on Saturday.

Week five - Tuesday

This is a short post which should be entitled 'The Road to Hell is Paved With a Good Intentions'.....

After my inspiring "let's get back out there" post yesterday I came out in a particularly nasty rash and got sent home from work.  The nice lady I showed it to at the Pharmacy thought it might be the result of a virus and given how crappy and out of sorts I've felt recently I am inclined to agree.  

Consequently I have been off work and therefore off games today.  I shall return to training on Thursday and might get an extra ride in on Friday, although I do want to start a new Pilates class then, but I promise I will get back into this damn soon!

Week four - Thursday to Sunday

I’ve haven’t really been feeling it cycling wise this week, which is bizarre given the wonderful weather. I gave Thursday a miss as I knew I was going out on Friday. I did go out on Friday with the husband on a beautiful ride. We did it in a good time and thoroughly enjoyed it, tweaking our favourite route meaning we did not have to ride down a very busy main road. I knew I had a busy weekend planned with a fete on Saturday and an afternoon out on Sunday but if I am honest I still could easily have fitted the two rides I should have done in. However, for some reason my heart wasn’t in it and I made fairly weak excuses to not go out. I’m not sure why I wasn’t in the mood. I think I partly wanted to spend the days sitting in the garden with my family rather than off out by myself. Also cycling seems to take up my every waking moment currently. I have spent a small fortune on equipment, think constantly about the sportive in August and talk about little else. In many ways I was bound to hit a bit of a wall and begin to view it with a certain amount of animosity. Having an off weekend doesn’t really matter in the cosmic scheme of things as I am ahead of the training programme due to my miscounting. However, I know myself and it would be very easy to slip into feeling apathetical about cycling, reduce my training then have a full on panic in the summer. Consequently I am starting this week afresh with enthusiasm. I intend to pretty much keep repeating the basic programme of rides of about an hour duration on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday (at least). When I get to 16/06/14 the training programme will have caught back up with me and I will be at week 5. In the interim though I need to get my eye back on the ball and fall back in love with my bike. I’m sure I’ll get there.

Week four - Tuesday

Cycling 1 hr

Steady paced ride – try not to get out of breath.  Pedal at 90-95 rpm.

This is an easy week so ride without hard efforts.  Try to relax and and enjoy yourself – consider a new route for variety.

 

Today I set out on my favourite route.

 

Rather unexpectedly I found the going pretty hard.  It’s a relatively flat route but my legs felt heavy and I made heavy weather of even the slight inclines.

 

I kept going though and put my difficulties down to being a little out of the zone.  As I said last week, I haven’t felt quite 100% since Thursday.  I know several people who also feel rather below par currently so although I don’t actually feel ill I assume I am fighting something off.

 

So after 45 minutes of pretty tough riding I checked my time and average mph and was very surprised to see I was bang on target for a good time.  I was averaging 12.5mph and I knew that with a little more effort I would be able to do the whole route in an hour or so.

 

    A good mph

I got my head down and managed to finish in 1hr 30seconds.  This is 1 minute slower than the day I was incredibly pleased with my time and 2 minutes faster than the first time I ever did it.  In addition, out of the 4 sections Strava grades you on on this route I got a new personal best on 3 of them.

I don’t know what this means!  But whatever way you look at it, I’m still doing well so that can’t be bad!

Week three - Sunday

Cycling 1.5-2hrs

A steady ride with company - try not to get out of breath.  Pedal at 90-95rpm.

Consider joining a cycling club or group - it's a fun way to ride.

I've not been feeling too well for a couple of days so I didn't ride on Thursday or yesterday (I felt a bit better yesterday but it was extremely windy so I gave it another miss).

Given my discovery that I've started training early I'm not overly concerned.

The weather was still very gusty today so Ant and I decided to just go out for an hour to ease me back into it.

We decided to try a new route we'd seen online but unfortunately we didn't really like it.  We needed to go along a gated road which was ok but obviously it interrupted the ride.  This wasn't the major issue however.  The real problem was the quality of the road.  It was severely rutted which made riding both uncomfortable and psuedo-dangerous.

Ant's bike has even skinny tyres than mine and he really struggled.

In addition to these issues we got lost! Not horribly lost but we couldn't figure out where we supposed to go so we gave up and just turned round.  

It wasn't an awful ride but it certainly between the wind, the ruts and getting lost it certainly isn't one we'll be repeating!

Rest day - miscounting, volunteering and The Women's Tour

Despite it being a rest day today I've had a very bikey day.

I've recently been accepted as a volunteer for Sustrans.  Sustrans is a cycling charity that supports and promotes cycling in the UK.  I've volunteered with them because I want to help out with the Northants Summer of Cycling.

It was whilst deciding which events fit in with my training programme and I can therefore help at that I discovered I had totally miscounted the dates leading up to my sportive,  basically I have started the training programme 4 weeks early! Obviously this doesn't really matter.  Following the training programme, albeit a month early, has made me more disciplined and confident in my riding.

Speaking of discipline today was Stage 1 of the first Women's Tour.  The highlights are on at 9pm on ITV4 each night and repeated in the mornings at 8am.  Some of the world's top female cyclists completed stage 1 from Oundle to Northampton today.  I'm just sorry I wasn't able to go along to watch - work really does get in the way sometimes!

2014 is going to be a big year for cycling with La Course by Le Tour de France also taking place for the first time on 27th July, but more of that nearer the time.  

Hopefully these new elite events will serve to get more women out there on their bikes, even if we can't always be relied on the count effectively!

Week three - Tuesday

Cycling 1hr

Steady paced ride.  Pedal at 90-95rpm, trying not to get out of breath.

Check that you are recovering after each training session.

I decided to do my hilly route tonight.  

I was lucky to dodge the rain and it was actually a really nice evening.

    Rainbow!

I was happy with tonight's ride.  I can't compare it with the last time I did it because as you may remember my phone ran out of battery.  This time I averaged 12.4mph which is good but I still feel I need to be a little faster before August.  The hill climb was a little bit slower I think but it was steady.

I definitely need more hill practice before August.  I can do them but I am slow and they tend to leave me very breathless.  I think I probably need an asthma review before August too.  I don't really suffer on a day to day basis but I feel like I get out of breath quickly when doing hills.  I perhaps need some tips on managing this to make sure I'm riding safe.

Speaking of riding safe I saw a lady cycling this evening in dark clothes, no helmet and an iPod on.  Seriously dangerous - don't try this at home kids!

Week three - Monday

Cycling 1hr

A steady paced ride at 90-95rpm with company.

Ride with a friend and chat as you go along.  This will check your breathing. Remember to ride together and not to race each other.

I've had another shuffle around with the programme and took yesterday as a rest day and rode today.

I did the same route as Saturday because a) it's my favourite and b) I wanted to see if I could improve on my slightly disappointing time. 

I started off with rather heavy legs again.  It wasn't exactly a morning ride in terms of it being a 9am job like Saturday but it was before lunch.  I made sure I had some high energy snacks (homemade energy flapjack and salami) before I went but still found it fairly hard going on the first (and only) hill out of my village.  

I felt a bit frustrated by this and decided I needed to get the negative thoughts out of my head and try harder.  I got my head down and really, really went for it.

It made a real difference.  I whizzed along and began to really enjoy myself again.  Whilst whizzing along something really great happened - I overtook two other cyclists!  I was really pleased with myself.  I've never felt confident enough to do this before but on this occasion I knew I could do it.  I was behind them for a little while and really felt they were holding me back .  I knew I could go faster and I was right!  This totally changed my outlook for the rest of the ride.  I sped along and was determined to do the ride in a good time.

However, my efforts were slightly thwarted when I got stuck behind about 20 vintage road bikes being ridden by 20 vintage gentlemen!!  I was stuck behind them for a good 5-7 minutes with no real idea of how to get past them.  

Despite this I knocked 5 minutes off Saturday's time and 3 minutes off the first time I did this route.  I'm convinced had it not been for the Gentlemen's Vintage Club I would have knocked even more time off.  

Any tips on overtaking large groups would be gratefully received! 

Week two - Saturday

Cycling 1 hr

Ride at a steady pace at 90-95rpm, trying not to get out of breath.

Try to exert yourself a few times so as to feel different levels of effort.

It's the weekend again. And a long one at that.

I decided to go out this morning to get the ride out of the way as we had plans to go out and buy chickens today!

It is a beautiful day again and really sunny.  I chose to do my favourite route which I discovered on week one - Thursday.  

    Sunny day ride

I found this morning's ride hard work compared to when I did it last week.  I could put this down to my morning ride issues but if you look back you'll see I've struggled this week.  I've changed my hours at work which involves me getting up an hour earlier.  I'm into my second week of doing this but I haven't had the sense to start going to bed an hour earlier.  I feel pretty tired and suspect it's starting to cause me trouble.  The obvious fix to this is to start going to bed a but earlier which I intend to do.  I'll report back on how that goes.

    More beautiful scenery 

Week two - Thursday

Cycling 1hr

Ride at a steady pace for 20 mins at 90-95rpm, the briskly for 5 mins at 110rpm.  Ease off for 10 mins at 80rpm, before another 5 mins brisk.  Warm down for 20 mins at 90rpm.  Brisk efforts will help anaerobic fitness.

Today I got the wettest I have probably ever been without the use of a bath, shower or swimming pool!

I blame myself. I gleefully texted a friend to say it wasn't raining and off I went.  

The heavens opened about 10 minutes in!  It was torrential!  I carried on regardless though.  Seeing as I've still no idea about this whole rpm thing I decided to just try to take it steady for a bit, speed it up in the middle, then take it steady again.  Despite the driving rain this seemed to be going pretty well.  You can see my speed profile here with the terrain profile in black in the back ground.  As you can see I'm not very consistent. 

    The highs and lows of cycling

By the time I'd got what was supposed to be about a third through my ride the rain had stopped which made riding somewhat easier.  But this didn't last.  It started raining again and this time heavier than ever!  It rained so hard it was actually hurting my legs!

I had intended to do about 4 or so miles more but the last bit of the route involved passing my house.  By this point I actually couldn't see anymore!  The rain was coming down so hard and straight into my face.  The sight of my house was too much of a temptation and I decided I needed to call it a day. 

I ended up doing 8 miles which took about 40 minutes.  I should have done an hour but in these awful conditions I just couldn't manage it and to be honest, I'm pretty impressed I even managed what I did!

    Bedraggled cycling selfie!

Fingers crossed for better weather for better rides at the weekend!