Everyone Loves Spring!

It's true. Just a shame today wasn't especially 'springlike'. The temperature never got above 3 degrees (we had a GarminMan with us, we knew exactly what the temperature was. And Gradient...'over to Wojtek for a Gradient check' is going to become a standard of our rides I am sure.)



But first, rewind 24 hours. Saturday morning. I met up with Max and Wotjek (new Uni cycling compatriots-awesome guys, say Hi if you see them) and as it was such a nice morning (sunny-no wind :O) we decided to take a trip to the seaside. That is to say we decided to leave our seaside town, and travel to a renowned coffee shop in another seaside town via a route that took in a seaside village. Imaginative or what?! Destination: Aberdovey which turned out to be ever so nice, and rather reminiscent of the latter stages of Milan-San Remo as Max pointed out. Just without the Poggio. Or Italian weather. But seriously, the road from Machynlleth to Aberdovey is one you have to ride at some point. Diary it, or write it down on a post it note and stick it to the mirror-you'll thank me sooner or later! 

View from Aberdovey back towards Borth.

Same again, but from outside the cafe.

So yesterday was lovely, plus the parents were down for Friday/Saturday so I got a couple of free meals and a massive food shop done as well! Rather pleased about that...especially with the homemade crumble Mum brought with her :D that's going down an absolute treat...


But back to today. The forecast was for heavy rain pretty much all day. It didn't turn out quite that badly, but it wasn't exactly balmy. Like I said, sub 4 degrees for the whole ride climbing into snow showers, descending out of them, seeing ice, (thankfully) missing ice on the road, getting cold digits. In fact, allow me to elaborate on that last point. The last descent we did, involving about 1000ft of height loss in a few miles left us all lacking sensations in feet, hands, faces, brains...and I can honestly say I have never experienced pain like the pain I experienced when my fingers finally thawed out back in the flat. It was exccrrruuucciiiatttting. I'm not normally one to moan, it never achieves much. But fook me! That hurt! Of course in true student style we managed to make the ride a bit more interesting on the climb up to Nant-yr-Arian:

What more can I talk about...rather ran out of time to do stuff this evening as was sorting out a rather interesting purchase that should make training more in depth, more specific and give me more to talk about on here in the future. Watch this space ;D




Weekly Bullet Point List:

• Less miles and hours than last week, which I think is due to post exam (which went well by the way!) feelings of euphoria/fatigue. Or maybe that's just an excuse. Either way! Felt a bit tired this week, but still got 10.5 hours in. 
• I now have my turbo with me. Which I am positive my flat mates will come to loath. I'll just have to be considerate when I use it I think!
• Got some food for my Bonsai tree, but it doesn't look good :/
• Ebay is addictive and should be banned. At least for half an hour every day.
• Brain is starting to 'fart' instead of produce eloquent acts of writing awesomeness, so I'll call it a night there.

Winter Version 2.0

Bet you've been waiting for this. 'I remember a post he did called Winter Version 1.0...how long until it becomes ver2.0?' well here it is! Nothing that exciting to be honest, first full week of the new training plan, went well...usual training babble! As I mentioned the other day I've started doing intervals again now and managed to recover sufficiently from Thursday's 'interesting' session to do another 3 days since then-so it's all good!


In need of sleep as a result of that-and still have an essay to finish off and revision to do (maybe tomorrow), so I'll leave you with:

• Saturday's route- http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/35057862
• Sunday's route was similar, except we took in the climb up to the Nant-y-Moch reservoir, so was about 13 miles longer.
• Video from a selection I took on Saturday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-k25SehPh8&feature=g-upl&context=G2c5d799AUAAAAAAAAAA

So Stats for this week:

• 12 hours,
• 190miles
• 15.8mph average
• Approximately 15,000ft of climbing (told you it was hilly!), 
• Roughly 150bpm average HR (maxed out at 197bpm a couple of times on hill efforts, sounds high-and it is-but still a good few below my maximum)

I won't be posting particulars of sessions up here obviously, but that should give you a rough idea of the week!

Couple of things I've realised; 

• even a 'recovery' ride round here seems to entail more climbing than a 'hilly training' ride back home.
• It's sooo easy for average speed to drop. Especially when you have to climb back up a rather large hill, tired, at the end of a ride. The same one that you hurtled down with gleeful abandon, fresh, earlier in the day.
• If your rear mudguard clip brakes within the first 10miles of a ride, you will want to rip the thing off and throw it asunder before the end. 
• Caffeine gels have no effect whatsoever on me. Which is a bit of a disappointment if I'm honest; took one as I ventured off alone into the wind for the last hour today and if anything it lowered my heart rate and made me go slow! Could be down to hydration, but I think I covered that. Oh well, best experiment with freeze dried coffee ;)

I'll be back next week, sans essay and revision and hopefully with the race bike here! Can't wait :D

Bonne nuit a tous.

Interval Exam Training

I've started training properly again this week. Or at least, I've tried to. To be honest I've been trying to since the 1st of Jan but Uni work has rather got in the way. Still the case if I'm honest, but I've got my exam on Tuesday so latter half of next week should be good fun! No lectures, no work, no pressure :D Always important to get the priorities right as well, one thing I am not is a Pro! Cycling is a hobby (ok, passion verging on obsession) but that's all it is at the moment. 


I tried to do a hilly interval session on Tuesday but was feeling a bit run down, I think it was the Uni equivalent of the sniffly 'back to school' bug that seems to circulate Primary Schools. Either way, it rather messed me up on Tuesday. I couldn't get my heart rate anywhere near what I needed and eventually crawled home to a phenomenal, competition creaming average speed of just over 13mph. So I had yesterday off, had a lie in (bliss) and resolved to try to do the planned session for today. Which I did. Long story short. 4 sets of sprint-ervals didn't seem like much of a task last summer...but boy was it interesting today. For a start it was windy, properly strong onshore wind and I'd chosen (ok not chosen as such-it's the only flat road around here) a coastal road. So that was fun. Unfortunately I didn't quite have the horsepower necessary to capitalise on the tailwind when it was there. Then there's the winter bike; which don't get me wrong is an awesome piece of kit-it just isn't made for sprinting. All that really just exacerbated the fact that I'm not sprint fit at all. By any stretch of the imagination. Riding shed loads of hills does wonders for your strength and threshold power but doesn't really do much for speed or those super short sharp efforts. The good news is, I can only go faster from now on-and progress is something we all like to see!


Also it was unseasonably warm today. I rode in a base layer, jersey and gilet and was too warm for a lot of the time. What's going on? Suppose it could just be the Aberystwyth Micro Climate again. I heard it hailed back home, so yeah...I'm not complaining!


Sorry this is brief, but I've still got an essay to be doing! I'll check in again at the weekend perhaps, plan on getting some ride footage with my handlebar camera again.


I hope you hang around for that :)

Revving It Up.

Was back at the Manchester Velodrome on Saturday, sadly not riding but there to watch the latest round in the Revolution series. I was the lucky recipient of a pair of free tickets after I won a Twitter competition run by Richard @PedalPrecision. Not only was he kind enough to run the competition, he then went to a lot of trouble to help solve the potentially disastrous problem of the tickets being lost in the Christmas post! So many thanks to him, he really did a lot more to help than I've come to expect in situations like this. The racing itself was fast, furious, engaging-everything track racing should be! Saturday's round had the addition of a tandem omnium with 2 Brit pairs squaring off against 2 Dutch crews. Now that was fast. Really fast. My Mum and Dad ride a tandem (as did I when a was younger) so I know first hand how fast those things can go; but bugger me. A tandem match sprint is definitely something to put on your 'to see' list! Luckily there were no mishaps-as you can imagine-they can be a bit hairy:

It was also an opportunity to meet Mr.danoh1 and Mr.lougo98 and have a chat. They were kind enough to give me some food, which as any self respecting student will tell you, is never something to refuse. :D 




Onto the second part of this rather interesting weekend. I met some team mates bright and early Sunday morning to ride into Preston to meet up with a group that normally does a ride from the Withy Trees pub. We ended up meeting the rest of the team there...and about 25 others. Honestly the biggest normal Sunday club run I think I've ever been on. Too big really, considering the traffic and road system up here. But still, always an experience being in a massive group.  Good to see @1leecarter again as well, even if it was just to exchange a few words. I always find it weird riding with people you race against, all too easy to forget they ride normally as well! 


I knew it was going to be a fairly big ride, as I'd already done an hour before getting to the Withy Trees and knew it would be at least the same again to get back-wasn't quite expecting it to be quite what it turned out to be though! Let's just say, name pretty much any decent sized hill in the Trough of Bowland area and we did it. Jubilee Tower, the Trough itself, Waddington Fell, Birdie Brow, Jeffrey Hill...quite a bit of climbing to say the least. The height gain itself is quite impressive, working out at over 4000ft vertical ascent but that coupled with the small group that forged on to tackle the second half of the ride after Dunsop Bridge made it sting a bit! It was good to to the Bowland climbs again, and it was...interesting...to finally do Birdie Brow. Those of you that know it will know why I chose that word. For those of you that don't, trust me when I say this (as someone who really rather likes climbing): it's horrible. Unrelentingly steep, it just goes on and on and on and on and on. It's been said it's reduced grown men to tears...or maybe that was just sweat, either would be applicable. Good to tick it off mentally though. 


Oh I nearly forgot, we stopped at Bashall Barn for a break. Bit of a mistake that. We were wet and a bit cold and they appeared to have left the thermostat on low :( that wasn't my biggest problem though, £6 for a coffee and beans on toast!!! :O Now, I wouldn't complain if it was Cedar Farm level coffee, or the Best Beans on Toast ever (I do that by the way if you were wondering :D) but it wasn't. Sadly. Not even close. I'm not sure when toasting a (yes, one) slice of bread and dumping about 10 beans on it warranted charging £4, but I obviously missed the memo. Not impressed at all Bashall Barn. Big black mark against your name in my book. Speaking of which, how cool would it be to do a Beans on Toast almanac? I could tour the cafes of the world (or is it just an English thing?! Say it ain't true!) and grow old and fat off the royalties! Or not. Probably not. Where was I? Ah yes, Bashall Barn. To be honest, Hugh did get a decent looking bowl of soup, but where's the fun in soup? Exactly :(


Garmin file here courtesy of the Soupmeister himself: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/139962358 I completed 102.20 miles in 6:07 minutes. Pretty decent average considering the climbing involved, it only dropped below 17mph for the last couple of hours. Good way to kick start the body again after an easy week. One thing's for sure, I appreciated my lie in this morning, and was very glad I didn't have to be in work or college bright and early this morning like some people (naming no names of course) :D


Did I mention we got rained on for about 4 hours? Nope? Well we did. I'm honestly not surprised, I feel somehow cheated if I don't return with soggy socks these days. I'd love to mention the impressive vistas that we were treated to on the tops, but sadly the weather had other ideas and visibility was down to maybe 30 feet or so for much of the ride :/ But all in all a very enjoyable ride, and special thanks to Routemaster Hugh for the second half! 




Weekend Summary:

• Samosas eaten: 1
• Essays finished: 1 (Yay!)
• Beans eaten: Approximately 15. Pah. Can you tell that's narked me off?
• Brand new brake blocks worn: 2 (seriously, brand new Sunday morning, nearly fully worn by the end of the ride. That's winter eh folks!)
• Fellow riders without mudflaps: Too many! They know who they are ¬_¬ (seriously, it's just plain antisocial) 
• Number of Pannier Rack assisted tows given: 1. (Good resistance training that, worth further investigation :P)

Sadly no pictures/video or anything other than words from this weekend, oversight on my part and I apologise. I'm back down to Aberyswyth on Thursday, so expect lots of ride footage coming your way!

Ciao.