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 ...

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...

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 thin...

In October I wrote a  blog post  which looked at areas I felt I could improve for the 2022 season. They were: Position.  Pacing. Lifting. Commuting. Do more work. Waste less time. Position I haven't ridden the TT bike outside yet, but I think  my position is better now than it was at the end of last season. Proof is in the pudding though. Pacing Nothing to say about this. Milo has been working on his burpees and it shows Lifting I started lifting in early September 2021 – before I had finished racing. Initially, I was lifting three days a week, but it was a bit too much, so I switched to twice a week in early October. My lifting has progressed quite nicely over the last few months. Deadlift is up to 125kg and Squat 105kg – both around two-thirds of lifetime best. It's most likely muscle memory firing back up, but I have had good legs for a workout in the evening after lifting in the morning. I'm going to try deadlifting sub-maximally on the morning before an evening ...

In my last blog , I wrote about the second part of my season culminating in the A21 Interclub TT. Long story short: I  snuck under 20 minutes  in average conditions, achieving a goal I had been chasing for a couple of years since doing 20:13 on the same course back in August 2019. Everyone has their favourite TT course, and the A21 is undoubtedly mine.  Having finally 'done a 19', I then went and  did another  on the same course two weeks later. This time, conditions were more favourable. It was great to get to the halfway point and know that I was on for a huge PB. Rather than straining every sinew to squeeze out every second on the way back, I was able to relax and attack the three slow parts whilst carrying some great speed in the interim. Incidentally, I probably went faster because  I was relaxed and enjoying it, rather than tense and fighting the effort. Sometimes easier said than done. I had intended to ride a few 25s after the A21 TT but, becau...