Don't forget your overshoes

Just back from a 75miler. I didn't honestly realise it was going to be so cold, so I set off without overshoes. About 15miles in the ice blocks that resembled my feet were begining to bug me. A quick call home to send out the "team" car (aka my dad in his van) resulted in him arriving with no overshoes as he couldn't find them, and him nearly running out of fuel by the time he reached me as he didn't think I would have made it so far. So that meant I had to hand over my coffee shop cash so he could get fuel. Nice one! Now I was not only sufferring from ice block feet but white van man had stolen my cash. Argh! Why is it some days just go like that?

Anyhow, it turned out to be a pretty good ride all the same. I had actually planned on doing 100 but without money to buy food I didn't want to chance it. I'm now sitting pretty in my slippers, scarf, wooly jumper and jogging bottoms, proud to have suffered the distance with cold feet. Tommorow, I will be more prepared!

New Team and Merry Christmas!

Afternoon readers.

Hope everyone has had a good christmas. Apart from spending the first half of my holidays fitting my mothers new kitchen, i've had a nice relaxing time at home with my mum, dad, sister (who is home from glasgow) and friends. Yesterday I did a nice easy 30miler before the Xmas meal to work up an appetite. I can safely say that i've now seen all the turkey and chocolate I want to see in a while!

The thing I enjoy about this time of year is that it marks the time for when the real focus for the race season begins. Having already filled my alcohol quota with celebrations with friends over the christmas period, i've decided to use the remaining 10 days of my holiday to lay down some high volume training miles. The weather outlook is good so I might venture across the water for a couple of days and do some exploring. Not what some people would consider the best way to spend new year, but for me, being on the bike is what I enjoy the most, so that's exactly what i'm going to do :-) At the moment, i'm probably in the best form I ever have been for this time of year, and i'm feeling highly motivated so things are looking good.

For the next bit of good news, I've also picked up a sponsor from Sandy Wallace Cycles who will be supporting me for the upcoming season. He already has the likes of Hamish Creber on the Team so it will be great to be riding and racing with other top cyclists. Thanks to the support given by Sandy, for 2009, I will be riding an Orbea Alma (same as Olympic Champion Julien Absalon). It should be in my hands in the next couple of weeks so i'm very much looking forward to recieving that. I'm building it custom spec as i'm a fussy blighter with my bike setup, but it will look something along the lines of the pic below. I will keep you posted on the full spec, and the build should come in around 19.5lbs by my calculations which saves 1lbs on my trusty GT Zaskar build, while gaining a heck of a lot of stiffness. Heck, if it is good enough for Absalon, it will sure be good enough for me!



So thats about it for the moment. I hope everyone has a great new year if I don't post again before then. Slainte!!

Nice winters day

Or at least it was until it started raining. Myself and my friend Roddy set off this morning for a 50-60 miler out towards Uig. With the roads all frosty, and little wind, we both were feeling the chill to start but soon warmed up. On the way back the heavens opened unfortunately, and we both ended up soaked to the bone. Roddy peeled off at about mile 52 to make a break for home, and I continued to turn the clock round until the 60mile point. Great ride (well, at least I thought so)!

Gently Does it...

It's been that long since i've had any sort of injury that i've forgotten how fustrating it can be. Got on the bike last weekend for a 50mile run and the pain in my knee kicked in again after 12 miles. I decided to turn back and let the wind take me home. After some thought, I decided a few days of layoff would be the best thing for recovery. I did a bit of walking which I always find helps balance the muscle groups out, and thankfully things are now feeling much better. This week I started out with some light 1 hour sessions on the turbo, with the view that i'd stop if I felt any pain. Plenty of stretching as pescribed by the physio was the key I think. It seems to have cleared up rather nicely now, and I managed to put in some 10min Sweet Spot efforts last night on the turbo, with no problems at all.

Today i'm heading for a walk before lunch, then an easy spin on the Mountain Bike in the afternoon. That is if the weather clears - it's sleeting heavy and 1 degree here with black, moody skies.

Did the Hundred!

Ok, a we while ago I mentioned I was following a 6 week plan to train for 100 pushups. I've incorporated the plan into my own core-strength workout which I do twice per week. I'm glad to say that as of tonight, I just did the final test and hit 100 pushups. I wasn't feeling too energetic to be honest but decided to give it a go anyway. I started out pretty steady, trying to focus on breathing as I always seem to hold my breath when doing them for some reason. I hit 60 pretty easy then started to feel a bit of a burn. At 75 things were starting to get a bit tough, so I stopped at 80 for a few seconds and regained composure with my arms locked. Managed up to 98 after that, the last two were damn tough, but I did it! Whey!

Enjoyed it so much that I think I will do a "100 test" monthly, and try to keep up the pushup form by maintaining the last couple of weeks of the program. In terms of bike performance, I think the program has futher increased my core strength to the point that I could sit in the drops on my road bike at any intensity for as long as I like. A year ago I'd get a sore back after 5mins.

Pushups Rock!

Winter Niggles and Power Training

Well that's me coming to the end of my first 3 week block of training. Next week i'm keeping things easy. Got in some fair quality for this time of year, and doing some different stuff in the gym and that has been fun. It's great to be back in shape. I think i'll be killing the upper body stuff in the gym and reducing to light weights from now though, I seem to be packing on muscle up top which is never a good thing for a climber like myself :D

However, along the way I appear to have picked up a little knee injury. My physio (thanks Pete) tells me it's from the Fell running down hill. Woops. The medial ligament on my left knee is inflamed due to the hammering it's had from running down hills, and is rubbing on my knee bone causing some discomfort. I've been told rest and ice until things return to normal. Lucky I have an easy week coming up! On the bike it's pretty uncomfortable, so i'm going to just lay up and do some walking/jogging/swimming and core work next week. You can see the inner Medial Collateral Ligament below. Pesky blighter!

On the plus side, i've got myself a new Turbo trainer with wattage readout. For those of you that don't know, a Turbo is something I mount the bike to and train indoors on those crap winter nights. It's a Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, with power computer and i'm led to believe from reviews and the like the power readout is fairly accurate as it has been Powertap calibrated. It's certainly the best "feeling" turbo trainer i've ridden. Having the numbers in front of you really does give you something to focus on. After doing some 20min "Sweet Spot" intervals the other night (which is where you train just below or at your threshold power), i'm knocking out 350Watts over 20mins. Ok, so that hurt quite a bit, but it's quite a pleasing figure. That means at 145lbs i'm sitting at a healthy 5.3w/kg. Kind of figures for an Elite class rider. If I could increase this to 400W over the winter (not likely but it's an aim), i'm good for 6w/kg which puts me at a pretty darn high level - enough to dice with Pro riders. Something to aim for in the long term at least. Check out my "green" machine... ;-)

Anyhow. Time to lay up the knee and chill out for the weekend. That will be the end of fell running for the time being unfortunately. It was fun, but I can't afford to do something that's going to jeapordise my bike training.

Laters

One Hundred Pushups

I've always been a fan of pushups as a great core and strength workout and i've always felt they work in really well with cycling and help hone your form. However, i've only ever been able to do around the 50 mark, until now that is!

http://hundredpushups.com/index.html has this cool 6 week training plan which is low intensive (and free bar a few mins of your time a week) to help you reach 100 pushups. Fits in great along side my other training - and I usually do each scheduled workout at lunchtime before eating so don't really notice the added time. I'm on week 5 at the moment so not long to go! It really is quite suprising how you can improve by following the plan. Let's hope I can reach the 100!

Check it out!