Friday, February 11, 2011

I'm training!

Yes! Getting back into it now. Most of January was spent on the road bike just getting back the fitness I lost between October and December. I didn't even do the work commute during that time so the base miles had to be put in. I was happy with the amount of effort put in during January - it was the most I've ever put in at the start of a year and almost a record in terms of KM's traveled and hours in the saddle, so that's good. Mind you, all of it was slow and steady.

Then I went to the Biking Blitz last weekend... which was a painful reminder of (a) the anaerobic effort required for Xc racing and (b) technical skills needed (not that I ever had much on that front, but over 4 months off the mountain bike had them in a pretty shocking state).

I was late arriving and after a bit of pleading with the person at the registration tent, I got my number and legged it up to the start line. I got to near the front of of the starting grid, but I was sitting there wet and cold with no warm up. At that point I decided the first few Km's would be my warm up and go from there afterwards. The race started at 12 and a few of the savage boys pegged off up the hill. I tried keeping up, but at the same not trying to kill myself. Eventually I caught up with the lads on the climb and got ahead before the final piece of climbing singletrack. Things went pair shaped after that on the techie singletrack where I struggled to get any flow going at all. Oisin and Simon just cruised up behind me and passed, either on the singletrack or the next section of fireroad. After that I just did the best I could and finished the race about 12th. I was happy with that considering the lack of mountain biking I've been doing and no having any warm up. I went out and did another lap straight after and planned to do a final one, but the weather was so bad, I called it a day and went home.

Since then I've been doing some shorter road spins and some easy intervals - will start doing the hard ones next month. I've also to sort out a race bike for this year... but thats in hand and I'll have more info on it next week :)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

race bike? Ya big tease!!