The bike has now been fixed up with some new handlebars and I reckon it is looking even better than before. I have lowered the front a bit more as well...might as well get as aero as my back will allow. Have been out on it once so far and it does feel good...got my first race on Bank Holiday Monday so we'll see if there is any improvement...to be honest. you would hope so though with 600 hard km's riding done in Portugal.
I have also had quite a nice surprise tonight when I went to the lake up the road from me. I went with the intention of doing a 1500m swim (the distance I need to do in a normal triathlon) at race pace to see where I was at this time of the year. To give you an idea, my best time last year was a 21:58 that I recorded in a lido in North London and was doing about 22 something in the races. I got round the measured course tonight in 19:38 which is a hell of a lot quicker than I thought I would be able to - the aim this year was to go under 21, so going under 20 is a massive improvement. There are not that many people who go under 21 in a normal race so this all stands me in good stead. It means that I should be able to gain an even greater advantage from the swim and bike than I had thought...i.e. my worst bit, the running, has more margin for error.
First things first, most of the injuries are well on the way to being totally mended now. I have some very strange areas on my body now though where it looks like I have some strange disease where the pigment has gone from my skin...my arm looks pretty bad. As for the training, I am back doing most things now, have been riding already and have recently made it back into the pool as well. Running on the other hand is not so good, I hurt my chest in the fall and it is still hurting a bit when I run, albeit, it is on the mend.
I flew out to Portugal last Thursday in what can only be described as a pretty bad mood. I just didn't know how much training I was going to be able to do, I had not ridden my bike for 4 days and the wounds were still looking a little raw really. I had decided that I would go out for a ride though as soon as we got back to the flat to see how things felt. In the end, it all felt okay and I suddenly realised that all was not lost, I was at least going to be able to ride for the week, not that riding was what I really needed to do though. I was under strict instruction from my coach to take it easy for a while though and just allow the injuries time to heal. I did try, but 20km's into the first ride, I couldn't resist and started to pedal a bit harder, and then a bit harder and before I knew it, I had knocked out 40km at pretty much race pace and had just done my longest ride in ages (60km).
Once I realised that the riding was not really causing me any problems, I quickly slumped into the pro cyclist lifestyle..the routine for the next 6 was therefore waking up early to have a nice breakfast and then going on the bike for 3 to 4 hours. Riding over there in the sun and with the occasional sight of the sea definitely makes riding that bit easier compared to the rain and traffic lights of here.
Anyway, I did all my riding out in Portugal on my Dad's steed, a nice little carbon fibre number that rides pretty well actually. My dad is one for his gadgets though and on my first ride he loaded up the handlebars with enough computing power to send a man to the moon. At any one time I could look down and by the time I had taken in all of the information, I was finding that I was about 200m further down the road....a death trap for sure. In the end I removed the heart rate monitor and settled for the Garmin GPS and the normal bike computer, that way I could get pretty much all that I needed.
The Garmin would supply with info like direction, elevation, speed, calories (wrong), time, time of day etc etc.
It is all strangely addictive though, but the best bit is when you get home and you plug the device into the PC.....all of a sudden you can see exactly what happened all the way through the ride (annoyingly, it can also highlight areas where you have made stupid mistakes or gone the wrong way)
You end up with a nice map though which is linked to Google. This one below was probably one of my hardest rides of the week, riding out to one of the bigger hills in the area and going up it three times, trying to beat the last time on each ascent...which I did :-)
The graph at the bottom can also be expanded to show you your speed over the terrain and I am pretty pleased with this one actually, not because I was able to average about 28kph up the 4k climb, but that after 75k's of riding, including the 12k of climbing, I was then able to do 20km averaging about 40kph on the final stretch coming back to the apartment.
Well, at the end of the week, I realised that I had managed to knock up just shy of 600km which has to be a record for me I think. My legs are feeling a bit tired at the moment, so I am having a few days off the bike, I think that I deserve a bit of a break.
Just need to get back out running now though...
Well, sooner or later, it had to happen. I have finally had a pretty bad crash on the bike. After almost two years of riding and only once falling off when not being able to get my feet out of the pedals, some kind of crash was pretty inevitable I think.
I was due to race the second of the Thames Turbo sprint triathlons on the Bank Holiday Monday so was going through the normal preparation of getting the time trial bike ready and making sure that all the gears etc worked by taking it out for a quick spin to Hampton and back. About 1k from my house there is a roundabout and I could see approaching it that it was safe so I stayed down on the extensions and tried to keep up the speed that I had to get round it, I must have been doing in excess of 40kph, but I still felt ok. I got about half way around and then suddenly had a shock when I realised that, I was in fact, going way too fast or I had missed the right line to get round. The pavement was coming towards me pretty quick and, for what seemed like an age now, I realised that I was going down and that there was nothing that I could do about it.
I finally whacked the pavement at full speed and then not really sure what happened after that. A couple of seconds later I got up and instantly checked the bike out...I was riding the bike with all the gear on so it had the best tires and more importantly, the new disc wheel. First inspection seemed to reveal that everything was in fact okay. I couldn't believe my luck and I think that I may have even smiled at that point. I had a look at the body though and I knew I was going to be in for some pain later on. The left hand side of the new cycling shorts had pretty much disappeared and taken half my bum with them, along with substantial amounts of skin missing from my leg and my arm as well. Nothing felt like it was broken though so slightly relieved at that. Thankfully, as I was not far from home, I simply got back on the bike and went to turn round and head back. It was at this point that I realised all was not well....my right handlebar pretty much came away in my hand when I pulled on it...the carbon bar had totally snapped and I knew that this was not gonna be cheap to replace.
When I got home, I also realised that the front tub had a bit of damage to it and then back one may need a bit of super glue to reattach part of the tread. So, all in all, about £300 worth of damage, so just about the most expensive km I have ever ridden.
I am flying out to Portugal tomorrow as well. It was supposed to be a week of really intense training but now it is looking like it is going to be a week of just trying to get the body to recover as quickly as possible. Still, the sun and sea have more healing properties than being stuck here in the office anyway.
I am trying to be positive about the whole thing, but it is hard. Yes, it could have been a lot worse, I have not broken any bones, it is not right the middle of the season or just before the Worlds. On the other hand though, Shropshire, which is where I was hoping to qualify, is only 5 weeks away and as it stands I am looking at missing about 2/3 weeks of proper training as I try to mend. That is basically a lot of running that I am missing out on that I really should be doing. Anyway, I'll see how things go in Portugal, I am sure that I can be back on the bike in a few days and then I'll see how I feel for running and swimming.
Everything was going so well....
