puzzling it all together

Before I start I wore shorts on a ride this week no leg warmers or bib tights so I’m officially calling an end on winter J . Now the season has sort of started with a few dipping my toe back in the racing water events which have become a mass change everything program for me it seems. I think having so many options and so many ways we can test stuff and try different thinks I’ve sort of got lost in it all, I want to try every little thing and jump massively from one set up to another in a crazy whirlwind of parts and kit and frustrating myself as I know I’m hitting the training targets, I know my power is way up and my weight now 7kg down from last year, everything is there I just can’t seem to click it all together.

Lucky for me Andy has a logical mind and the tools to get the job done which is the opposite to my headless chicken grab everything off the shelve and try it ,dismiss it then try it again.to get to the bottom of everything he has come up with a great way of testing my power drop off in certain positions, as my il slam it as low as it goes two days before a race without a power meter to actually test anything and see how it goes is a pretty crap way of testing anything J.
This involves getting set up on the turbo with a power meter and basically raising and lowering the front of the bike and seeing where my power drops off and comparing it to hr and using the lactate testing in each position to see what stresses each position puts on my power output, then finding an area of hip angle I can work in then going to the velodrome to get the best position in that range.
We had a meeting of minds last week and looking at the position I had tried I was crazy low to the point I was putting out over 40w less than normal and the fact that I had to raise my head to see was un aero as well, and I had been stupid enough to race like this and still scratch my head after wondering why I was still going so slow.
I think part of my problem was not having time to adapt in different positions so Andy has very kindly let me train on the 9.4 so I can train in the tt position, once the TTE is ready and sorted I will train a lot more in the tt position in a set up that works then I’m gluing everything down and just getting stronger in that position before swapping to anything different, to that end I’ve decided to not race until I’m sorted as me going out and performing way below where I should be I don’t feel is in anyone’s interest.

 

Anyway the point of this blog was to basically tie up all the little bits I keep missing and forgetting to add to my blog, so many things are going on ( most excited about working with www.indurance.co.uk but I will go into that fully next time but it’s the future I’m sure in performance management ) , I’ve got the Dursley road club 10 tt on the 11^th April ( shameless plug ) which I’m organizing ( I say I’m organizing I’ve had a lot of help from the club so everyone deserves a shout out ) and was really honoured how my sponsors stepped up to support it especially Nopinz who have been super kind to me and supported me a lot even though they don’t officially sponsor me and offered over £200 worth of prizes , plus bike science offering two lactate test and the likes of jersey pocket and science fitness uk and Jwhiting nutrition offering top prizes it should be a great event, with coffee from Veloton and cakes from Little gems cakes as local as it gets from the town of Dursley.

 

Talking of Nopinz the funky Velotoze overshoes dropped through the letterbox this week , as my smart ones are pretty much falling off my feet and these where about a fifth of the price and come with Blake’s aero guarantee I thought it was worth a try,

Getting them out they felt like a elephants condom but once on the they are awesome, super snug fit even on my small child like ankles and  no wrinkled up areas anywhere, and at that price point I’m going to get a few spares so you can pull a shiny new pair out just for the key races. I haven’t had change to test them or see how they wear but initially on fit hugely impressed.

 

It’s been a busy week for my postman as some serious carbon bling winged its was over from Ireland this week ( I will try and add some pics of the velotoze and the carbon loveliness later but its all on my twitter ) from a little very part time business called prologue Performance ( I say very part time as David works to many hours in his day job ,juggles a family and training and basically does the carbon work for the love for a limited amount of people ) .

I’ve had a berner style cage made for my sram red rear mech which really looks the business and a cover to clean up the cranks around the bb , completely one off bits and very skilfully done and super cheap for the amount of work that must of gone into getting it done. Just search for David Heagney or prologue performance on facebook and check out a lot of tt race prep stuff, I just wish I could get the TTE over to Ireland when it’s ready to get him to spend a bit of time working his magic on it.

 

The focus now is fully on getting the set up right, I’ve spent all of winter working on me as a rider and that area is going super strong much better than I hoped ,but now I need to look at the bike and position , it’s been hard not having a tt bike all winter as its normally a time I would spend looking at little changes and making improvements but the year is young and I have the support to fast track a lot of changes and equipment and hopefully be where I should be very soon.
It’s been a frustrating start to the racing year but that’s all 100% down to me , everyone else involved have done their part perfectly its just some of these things take time to fully click ,but that will just make ever success that little bit sweeter.