A rude awakening.

Who forgot to change their clock forward when they went to bed on Saturday night? Me, that's who. So there I was, laying in bed thinking about getting up for a nice cup of tea and a slow start, when Turbo Man's text arrived, asking if I was still coming out, or had forgotten to change my clock. From horizontal to vertical and pedalling in 7 mins isn't bad. But it did mean that I probably wasn't best prepaired for the South Downs sportive route, 100+km before breakfast, and by the end of the ride it would be fair to say that I didn't have that much left in the tank. However, it was a good ride in dry weather, without strong winds and with good company. Well worthwhile. I can feel it in my legs today though. I am feeling confident that I am ahead of where I was before IM Germany, so I now need to build on it and take it forward.

Mixed week.

This week has been really productive, with some real quality sessions-up to max hr daily, and feeling like I am growing stronger daily. The week was capped by 3 1/2 hours on Sat am, a new route taken from a local sportive map. I knew when we went out that I was feeling a bit under the weather and it rained the entire time we were out. Sunday morning brought a sore throat and cough. Time to dig the Zinc and vit C out of the cupboard. Saturday's ride was also memorable for 2 puntures. Although I thought that I had got the flint fragment out of the tyre, the second tube went within a couple of minutes. I got home and after inspection, ended up binning the rear tyre as it was full of nicks, cuts and bits of flint.

On the plus side, all the bikes in the garage got a service and clean this weekend (even took a cassette to pieces, that's how thorough it was, and the single speed mtb went on ebay to make some room for my next planned purchase...

A good weekend this weekend - just under 3 hours on the bike with Turbo Man, but at a decent pace. I don't want to speak too soon, but things seem to be coming together nicely. This week is designed as a heavy training week so it will be interesting to see how my performance is next weekend!
Took my winter training bike to pieces yesterday for a proper clean. I'm going to need to take the hubs to pieces and rebuild them - the front one feels really 'gritty' with quite a lot of resistance to free movement - there's another 2mph there at least!

A bit of a breakthrough week this week. Some really good, intensive sessions. I got hold of a Spinnervals DVD so that gives me a 2-hour anaerobic session for the evening. Additionally, I am working harder than ever on my hill runs, (right up to the tunnel vision stage) but need to make sure that I still get in the longer sessions. These anaerobic sessions are what have always been missing from my IM training as I have always just concentrated on getting round.