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Musings

For the first eight months of Gussy’s life, I feel like I managed to juggle everything really well. Obviously, my priorities are Gussy and Sophie, and I always made sure that I was being the father and husband that I want to be before I thought about anything else. Yet, I was able to manage to do it all in a way that I was – and am – really proud of. And then things changed. In early February, Gussy was a bit poorly, nothing out of the ordinary, but a series of persistent small illnesses that wore her down. Sophie and I also got ill – me to the point that I barely got out of bed for a few days – and our illnesses were also pretty hard to shift. Gussy, however, had it the worst and ended up in hospital. Although it never felt like it was that serious, it was still pretty terrifying to see her the way she was and also to feel completely helpless to be able to do anything. It took about a week, but eventually she got better and her usual sunny disposition returned. Before long, so did the
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Life as a new parent

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This blog post is going to be a bit different. It'll be a mixture of my experience of being a new parent, and training during unprecedented - are we allowed to say that word again yet? - times. If you’re thinking of having kids soon, some of the things I write about may be helpful. Or they may be absolutely useless. Because what worked today might not work tomorrow. It might not even work in ten minutes’ time. Welcome to the chaos of parenthood. It’s the best job in the world. There’s something otherworldly about the beginning of parenthood. It’s like each day starts with this perfect, untouched canvas of sand you get at beaches in warm countries. Regardless of what happened yesterday, you begin each day with that same blank canvas. You could’ve built the world’s greatest sandcastle – it doesn’t matter; today, you start afresh. There’s something meditative, almost Zen-like, about this constant resetting to zero. It forces you to focus on the process because it’s a task without an e
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2022 East Sussex 100 Mile Time Trial

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Earlier in the month, I wrote  this  and  this  summarising how my season has gone so far leading up to the 100 mile TT on Sunday 7 August. Background When I planned out my season in October last year, I wanted to do a 100 mile TT on a fast course. There's usually a 100 in August on the A11 in Norfolk. So, I was going to build towards that. The event was cancelled in June after a cyclist died in a separate event on the same/similar roads. Initially I wasn't sure whether to find a different 100. I wasn't particularly keen to ride this course, partly because it's the third-slowest in the country (out of 32, according to Spindata). And also because the road surface is a bit crap in places. Fine for a 25 or 50, but trying to dodge potholes for four hours takes its toll.  Slow, rough in places, gentle rolling terrain - oh and it's 0.7 miles too long, so a couple of minutes extra. Just what you want after riding for 100 miles. Not much going for G100/861 as far as it goes
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My season so far - part two

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In part one  I went through the early part of the season leading up to a training change in mid-June. The first race after altering my training plan was the hilly TT. Usually it's 21 miles but there were roadworks on the Gracious Lane bridge so it was twice around the Baileys loop. I was really happy with this ride. I rode 2 hours to work in the morning, then it took an hour and a half to get back to Sevenoaks. So, 331W normalised after 3.5 hours. Racing on the Reilly was also a lot of fun even if it is quite a lot slower than a TT bike. Next was another trip west to the A3. Legs felt okay but not great, so I was very happy to do another 19 - and to know last season's weren't a fluke! I did have some power meter dropouts during this so it was 342AP/347NP.  Next was the first of three 50s in consecutive weekends. July You know that saying 'fail to prepare, prepare to fail'? Well, this was the embodiment of that saying. Kinda. In the first 50 of the season, the fluids
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My season so far - part one

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My last blog post , back in March, summarised my 2021/22 Winter base period. In this post, I'll run through how my season has gone so far. April I kicked off my season a bit earlier this year with a 10 on the A3. I got sick two weeks before the race, didn't take enough time off and subsequently went into this race not 100%.  Not an ideal start but, as I wrote back in April, pretty good power-to-speed ratio which would bode well for the 50 on the same course in July. Next up was a 25 in Kent just two days later. I went out on the day between the races and felt good. I did a 5 minute supra-threshold effort which felt pretty snappy, so decided to race. Power was a bit down (308 average, 312 normalised) but I was fairly happy with this ride. I was 1:46 behind Nic Fennell and 2:44 behind his brother Chris. Possibly an off day for one or both of them, but it gave me a boost to be relatively close behind. A couple of weeks later I kicked off the Interclub with a good ride on a sluggis
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It's a Base of two halves

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27 long rides! Just before Christmas I wrote a  blog  summarising the first half of my Base period for the 2021/22 season. This blog post will roundup my training for the second half, from late December 2021 to early March 2022. The plan for the second half of Base was much the same as the first half - lots of volume with two hard rides and two long rides per week. The Crash In early January I hit a cyclist trench in Haxted, rugby tackled the road and came off second best. The damage to the bike was extensive and expensive. Fortunately, the damage to my body was mostly aesthetic. The crash happened on the Sunday of the second week of a block, so I moved my recovery week forward one week and cracked on with training after that. Lifting Like the on-the-bike training, lifting had been going really well prior to the crash.  Resuming lifting was not so straightforward. My left shoulder took the bulk of the impact so I was a bit limited as to what I could do without making things worse. I di
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