Blog About Sam's Thoughts And Riting Diary

Across the weekend of 20-21 July, the Mersey Roads National 24 Hour Time Trial was held largely in Shropshire though it started in Cheshire and the last few hours were spent across the border in Wales. I attended in support of clubmate Martin Brown, who had completed the event unsupported(!) in 2017 and managed over 400 miles. The target this time around, with Coach Dave Truman, Richard Bryant and I there to support, was 435 miles or 700 kilometres. Richard collected me just after 8am as the rain began to lash down in Hitchen Hatch Lane. I had set my alarm two hours previous to get out for a quick bike ride and managed to miss any moisture coming from the air, though there was a bit of surface spray. The rain showers reduced visibility a little for the first hour or so of the drive, with a partial lane closure for surface water on the M25 (or possibly M40?). Once the rain stopped we made really good progress, getting to the rather small Warwick Services before 10am for a quick

I woke up at 4:50am on a Sunday to drive for an hour in order to race my bike for 50 miles around the plains of South East Kent and the Far East of Sussex. The weekend life of a tester is a funny old thing. Congregating in a village hall, speaking in hushed tones in the adjacent car park and queuing out the door for the only toilet are all an integral part of the TT experience. I wouldn't change it. The way I am going to structure this blog post is to take what I had planned, in my blog post on Wednesday, and compare it to what I actually did. Power I am confident I will be able to maintain 270 watts for the duration. So. Much. Data. As the image shows, I surpassed the 270-watt target. The power meter dropped out (see below) for a total of about 50 seconds, so I think the power numbers might be more like 277 AP, 280 NP. I felt confident of maintaining 270, but I didn't think I would be able to maintain a NP of 277-280. Notice the flat purple lines Th

Sometimes when I read race blogs written after the fact, I wonder how skewed the author's memory is by the race itself. I thought I would do things a little differently than usual for this blog post. Ordinarily I would write about my training, goal and race after the event, but this time I'm going to post some information prior to the race, and write another post after. The reason for my doing this is to provide you, dear reader, with information as to how I plan and prepare for a time trial, should that be of any interest to you. If not, it might well be an eye-opening insight, for me at least, as to how my preparation affects race performance without the rose-tinted glasses confusing matters. Recovery After my 100 I took a few weeks of reduced mileage, doing a few workouts here and there, racing if I felt like it and just generally trying to get rid of the fatigue. I had probably done too much too early in the season and I could feel I had overreached, a clear war