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!