Blog About Sam's Thoughts And Riting Diary

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

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

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