After some great rides I hit a bump, I was 34w down on
a 25 tt just one week before the national 10. The only explanation to this was I
had caught the back end of a virus as the numbers where good the training
load was spot on with a mix of efforts and good recovery but my body had just
deserted me. I took a good few days off and took it easy before the national 10
, I knew the course having ridden it a few weeks before but in the back of my
head I wasn’t feeling it and if you’ve been reading the blog this year you’ll
know if the heads not in it everything goes out the window, early season disappointments
and let downs really set a poor precedence for this year and its just been
impossible to shake it off, but as they say what doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger ( eventually ) .I wasn’t even planning on going at all for the 10 but Blake
was taking the nopinz stand up so I thought if I offered to help out and if I didn’t
ride it wasn’t the end of the world. It was raining from pretty much the moment
we got there, I set the bike up and pondered as the rain came down harder and I
got my kit on thinking in the back of my head that I didn’t have the ride in me
on the day, some might say that’s not really the attitude to have and you
should just get out there and go for it , but from experience of this year that’s
a very bad idea for me and just leads to frustration and a cycle of smashed
confidence ,so for this year its just better to write it off and on to the next
one.so my start time came and went as I changed out of my kit , I got as far as
the door and that was that, maybe I should of rode but I didn’t so I have to
stand by that decision as the right one for me.
This is where winter will be key this year, a chance to sort
all the niggles out, get rid of the frustrations of struggling with power on
the tt bike and hit 2016 with a whole different mind-set , a mind-set I had at
the start of winter last year but got washed away in early season frustrations.
I’ve still got a few rides left this year when it would
normally be all over by now, I’m going into them putting no pressure on myself
and just enjoying it, it’s a chance to iron out a few things and try and finish
the year with abit of confidence before winter.
One area I wanted to nail was sorted this week when the winter
training tt bike was sorted thanks to tom Blease,this should really help me
close the gap I found so hard this year from not having time on the tt bike and
also save my TTE from a winter of use, matt has given me lots of off the bike ways
to improve power in the tt position but nothing beats actually riding the
position on the road so I’m really interested to see the difference it makes to
the numbers on race day.
So onto the lumpy and bumpy U17 Sunday on a course I really don’t
like but its local and a few more tt bike miles in the legs , this didn’t really
go to plan when I hit a real rough patch of tarmac not far from the start , the
legs where really hurting and to start with I put this down to a heavy week
training in preparation for the welsh 50 champs in a few weeks , and just kept
going, but the legs where really hurting and everything just felt really wrong
even though pace wise I was still going fairly well. It got to the point where
normally if the legs started bad I would of rode through it by now and started
feeling better but it wasn’t happening so I costed for abit and looked over the
bike for clues, I instantly spotted my rear light which is normally right well
away from the top tube was now nearly touching it and my seat post had dropped
around 2 inches so no wonder it was nailing my legs, so I dropped off to the
side of the road and made my way back to the HQ stuck in that frustrating area
of wanting to go into a mad rage and just thinking it’s another disastrous day
of luck for me this year and trying not to dwell on it.
by the time I had rolled passed the finish informing the
time keeper I was a DNF it had turned to rage and I dropped my number off and
went wishing I had just stayed in bed, and knocked my DNS or DNF tally up to a
very saddening 8 for the year.
Next up is the Welsh 50 champs, on a stretch of road I didn’t
really like before but it seems to of been fairly kind to me this year with the
National 100 result and the 3rd at the welsh 10 champs a few weeks
ago so I’m looking for another strong result.
But the end of racing this year is nearly in sight and it’s
a relief to be honest and I’m looking forward to two weeks off the bike and
getting everything in order for next year.
Its crazy this year as I had ambitions of getting on the
fast courses and really nailing down my pbs but I haven’t ridden any of the
fastest courses this year , no trips to the R25 no F11/10 or V718 but I’ve
managed to knock big time off my course pbs looking down my white board of races
including 54 seconds off a Local 10 course so its shows everything is there but
means I’m probably going into 2016 with times that really don’t tell much of a
story with 19:33 for 10 miles and 49:56 for 25 but does mean I can look forward
to destroying them next year J
