Tag: changing seasons

Autumn training – Motivation Blues

I always find it difficult to keep motivated to train once the clocks change and the weather starts to get colder and usually wetter.  By this time last year I had entered the Deloitte Ride Across Britain so I had something to aim for and I knew that if I didn’t put in some constant training between November and March I would pay for the inactivity later in the year when I needed to increase the training to gain fitness for the sportives and the ride in September.

Now I have no major challenge planned for 2019 – the Deloitte Ride Across Britain was a one off “bucket list” event for me and I had made it clear to my sponsors that I wasn’t going to make a habit of doing major sponsored events.  This means I’m not training for anything in specific and will not be letting anyone down if I back out of any particular sportive.  Also, to be honest, I’m not sure if I want to go through the amount of training I put myself through in 2018 in order to end up riding the Land’s End to John O’Groats (LEJOG) without any fitness issues and completing each day in the top 25% quartile of the riders in the event.  It has been nice getting my life back since September.

Readers of this blog will know that I use Training Peaks to track my fitness levels.  The training graphs show a decline in fitness since the end of the ride – to be expected given the huge effort required to complete the ride and the fact that the weather has not been too conducive to long outside rides.

These graphs show the fitness line declining rapidly since the end of the ride and now flattening off as a result of re-starting a fitness programme.  I’m about 20 “points” below the fitness level before the ride – not too bad and not unexpected given the amount of training I was able to carry out over the summer.  My current aim is to stay above the 365 day fitness line for as long as possible; April 2019 will probably be the tipping point!  My weight has increased since the end of the ride to around 87-88 kg and you don’t want to know about the body fat percentage!  Let’s just say I haven’t bought any chocolate in the last two weekly shops and it’s given me the kick up the backside I needed!  The one date in the diary for 2019 is the KOM Sportive run by my coach Lawrence at Enduraprep on 30 March – I don’t think I’m allowed to miss it!

I went past one of the locations of my regular photos today in a ride to Cowbridge and I now have a collection of photos from March to November of some oak trees near Dyffryn Gardens.

March 2018
April 2018
May 2018
August 2018
September 2018
November 2018

This week I have an event to go to with Dementia UK in London where I will find out how the money I raised in the ride will be used.  The final total is £5,050 plus Gift Aid which gives a fantastic grand total of £6,012.78.  The Virgin Money Giving page will close in the middle of December (three months after the end of the ride).  It has been very easy to operate and I can certainly recommend it compared to other more expensive donation sites.

Two Months To Go – Training Review

In two months time I should, all being well, be sat down in Bath having completed Day 2 of the Deloitte Ride Across Britain riding from Land’s End to John O’Groats.  The ride will be 980 miles over 9 days.  I’ll see how I feel about finding an extra 20 miles, perhaps on Day 4 (meant to be an “easy day”) to take it up to a round 1,000 miles!  I just hope the weather is slightly cooler than it has been recently, not that I’m asking for rain, it’s just that I completed a 2 hour ride this morning and it had already reached 27 degrees according to my Garmin by 10 am!  I felt sorry for the riders in the Wales Velothon riding up to 140 km (87 miles) today.

While the ride itself will be a challenge having to ride an average of 110 miles a day for 9 days, the training in order to be fit enough to enjoy the ride has been much more of a commitment than I ever expected.  My aim, all along, has been to be able to complete the ride.  However, I think it is important to be able take in the experience of riding the length of Great Britain and not to have to worry about being caught up by the broom wagon and this requires a certain level of fitness.  Threshold Sports, the organisers of the Deloitte Ride Across Britain, made training programmes available to all the riders.

Today I sat down and added up the total time I have spent training for the ride since 1 January this year:

  • Rides inside on a turbo trainer (56 sessions)
    • 46 hours 40 minutes
    • 1,335 km or 834 miles
  • Rides outside (34 rides)
    • 107 hours 17 minutes
    • 2,733 km or 1,708 miles
  • Elevation gain (combined) 41,429 m or 135,922 feet
  • 19 separate gym sessions of up to an hour each working on strength training

As the year as gone on, the training time has increased each month both in terms of time, distance and intensity.  I am a lot fitter than I was in January and weigh 8kg less! A lot of credit has to go to Lawrence at Enduraprep who has designed my training plan and kept my training going in the right direction.

The ride this morning meant a reasonably early start to try and avoid the heat, I also had to be at my sailing club by 12 noon for a sailing duty.  On the ride round Cardiff Airport I met an 82 year rider who was seriously quick despite his age (and kept me puffing on the climbs) – he told me he was still competing in time trials well into his 70s.  I’d be delighted to still be cycling at that age let alone competing.  He was also taking a brand new bike for a spin, so it goes to show that the formula for the number of bikes (n+1, n being the number of bikes you already have), i.e. there is always a reason for another bike, applies even when you reach your 8th decade !

Continuing with an earlier theme of taking pictures in the same place to show the changing seasons, here is a picture taken near Dyffryn Gardens with the oaks trees in full leaf and the grass standing tall !

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Near Dyffrn Gardens, Vale of Glamorgan

There is still plenty of time to sponsor me to help raise lots of money for Dementia UK   I have been very fortunate recently to receive some very generous donations so I am getting close to my initial target.  Remember the target is there to be smashed so please don’t hold back!  You can reach my Virgin Money Giving page here

Chilly riding for the end of April

Last weekend was the first for three weeks when I didn’t have an organised Sportive to attend – it was a good job too as the weather didn’t play ball !  My Saturday ride was more like riding in mid March with an average temperature of 8 degrees Celsius, in other words pretty cold with the need for leg warmers, long sleeved top and wind jacket.  So different from last weekend with bib-shorts and short sleeves.

I tried out a longer distance, intending to go round the west side of Bridgend.  However a wrong turn took me part way into Bridgend before I started to go the right direction to Porthcawl.  A look on the map afterwards shows me where to go next time I want to ride a fairly flat ride – only 1,200 m of climbing in 113 km, not bad for the Vale of Glamorgan.

Repeating some of the routes allows me to see the changing of the seasons, definitely darker looking green grass and more leaves appearing on the trees.

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Here are a couple of photos taken from the same vantage point from a couple of earlier blogs and hopefully I’ll be able to repeat the process over the coming months.

In terms of training, the last few months are starting to pay off.  I did a Functional Threshold Power test last Wednesday, the 20 minute version rather than the hour long test – I do wonder if anyone does the full hour !  For those who haven’t heard of or done a FTP test, it involves warming up for around 15 minutes (minimum) and then riding as hard as possible for 20 minutes on a static bike that measures your power output.  I managed an average power of 259 watts over the 20 minutes which is only 2 watts off my personal best set after two weeks of riding everyday on holiday in Greece.  Although the test is absolutely horrible to do, I will probably do a couple more FTPs before September to test my fitness levels.  I have found the key to the test is not to start too hard but to try and be consistent for the first 10 minutes and then try and increase the output a little – the last three minutes are always the worst!

It’s now less than six weeks to the next Sportive, the Dragon Tour with L’Etape Wales, which involves two days riding in the Brecon Beacons near Crickhowell and then the Dragon Ride from Margam Country Park near Port Talbot.  It will be a good test of riding long distances on consecutive days and a few of my new cycling friends from the Deloitte RAB I met on the training ride will also be taking part.

Do remember, I am doing the Deloitte RAB to raise money for Dementia UK and you can visit my Virgin Money Giving page here