Busy Boy

I have been quite busy of late...

...Never volunteer to do anything for anybody: My new motto.

The next few months is going to see the challenges of 24hr racing and also some from a Boss that realises I can do some grown up stuff other than just the clinical work I'm employed to do.

I wish he'd found out in the winter time.

This weekend was my chance to verify my endurance base after the, err, weight loss I suffered a few weeks ago. This has meant rescheduling to race at SITS instead of 24/12.

A 5 hour ride is generally a tough ride, even at endurance pace. My legs had been stiff all week after I had the daft idea of trying to ride 100miles in 4hrs 30min in the Welsh hills on the Sunday. I did it, but it nearly killed me. Happy days!

So I started with fairly dead legs after a week of easy spins and some intervals. My legs had been really painful due to the ride on Sunday and it took about an hour for them to wake up. After that I was spinning away happily.

At the end of the ride I had consistently taken 5 to 7 minutes off my lap times for the same ride last year, when I was bottle fed. This year I was carrying 6hrs of fluid and all of my gels, so I was heavier.

This was a good ride. I finished strong, and happy. I had ridden quite hard, at 24hr pace and lapped Cwmcarn in just over 55min. Not fast for the "Big Boys" but a real improvement for me.

My next big training ride will be 4 weeks before Relentless and I hope to do 9 Laps in just under 9hrs.

Bring it on. It's my home training ground and good practice for Relentless.

Nathaniel and Big Philth

On the last lap around Cwmcarn I met up with my little mate Nathaniel, and Big Phil; one of the guys that got me into Mountain Biking. The Young 'un was on my Elan, as he is visiting from Canada for a couple of weeks. He looked a bit tired; the bike is a proper downhill rig and not for the fainthearted to peddle uphill. But he wanted to try it, so who am I to turn him down?

He loved it on the downhills, mind you.

Sunday morning and he popped around to borrow a lighter bike. :)

For me, Sunday was a big day in terms of my resilience. I had to look after the birthday girl, and then try and find a window in the Biblically proportioned rain, to get my last ride of the week in.

It was absolutely torrential. Cwmcarn had a river running down the singletrack: all of it.

At 5pm, I had had enough waiting. So I went for it.

The rain got heavier. It was awful. But once you are wet and warm, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is the Cwmcarn Grit, but I won't divulge any more on that sensitive subject.

Normally on a ride the day after a long ride, I feel tired and have to think about reigning it in slightly. No such rubbish today. I warmed up and just got faster through the evening. After finishing at nearly 9pm, I got off and washed my bike before slinking into the utlity room to derobe and give the washing machine a bit of abuse. Poor thing.

My fitness is coming back. SITS should be a good ride.

Here's hoping.

I want my bike back, Nathaniel.

It's good to come home

It's been a bad couple of weeks.

Never mind.

Since Jo did her solo at Mayhem, I had had a bit of a dicky tummy. Nothing too bad, just a little bit grumbly.

So we went on holiday for a week, to be with our friends in West Wales, and "a little bit grumbly" turned into full blown nastiness. Nia had it too, so we didn't spend a whole lot of time together with our friends, at all.

It was also the hottest week of the year so far, with temperatures and humidity both very high. I was worried about dehydrating as I couldn't keep any fluid down (or up) for the whole week.

To compound the issue, I had committed to a couple of photoshoots during that week, with Seb Rogers. Nice guy.

Monday was at Cwmcarn and at the height of my dehydration. It was so humid that Seb was mopping his brow before every shot, so he didn't dribble on his camera. I had an egg for breakfast as that was all I could tolerate, and then we were out on the trail for about 5 hours. Luckily the water was staying down.

"How are your freeriding skills, Dave?"

"I dunno? Ok, I s'ppose?"

"Do want to ride down that?"

Long pause....

It was a sneaky way straight down into the tunnel on the corkscrew in the freeride section. I would never have seen it as a line.

"Hmm? That's quite steep and rocky. Yes, of course I'll do it."

Seb says, "You can drop your saddle a bit if you like?"

"Thanks!" sort of sarcastically. Now way was I going down there with my saddle up. No way Jose!

I think I looked nervous.

So I did it anyway, about 10 times, and ended up using the left side of the tunnel as a berm to fire me across to the normal exit berm, thereby missing the big hole in the bottom created by folks dragging their brakes.

It was quite good fun, but the forks were making a funny clunk and had lost all of their rebound damping by the end of it. Lucky it wasn't my bike.

The second Photoshoot was over Sebs' neck of the woods, and near the Clic24 course. But this was for a triathlon magazine and was a test of a few roadbikes. I liked them all, and would have had any one of them.

That was another 5 hours out in the sun, on an egg and 2 bananas.

I did one other ride around Brechfa in the fortnight, but had to stop because I came over all funny. Such is life.

Yesterday I rode my bike properly, at solo pace and slightly above. I felt a bit out of sorts, but not too bad. Where I had been doing 20+mph average on a 3 hr ride, I managed 16 or 17 for a 2 hr ride.

It'll come back, but not in time for 24/12.

So Jo said (with quite a bit of glee) "I'll do it!"

So I've lost my place to her, but it's for the best. I'll do SITS. For 24/12 I need to be right on my game; more so than ever before, and that just isn't going to happen. It's questionable whether or not I could actually finish a 24 solo in 3 weeks, so I'm not taking the chance.

Jo can enjoy it, and I'll give SITS my best go, now. It's not how we planned it, but it'll have to do. My weight can come back back up as I recover, and I'll hit the August race as hard as I can. Here's hoping!

Whilst I was feeling dejected, I decided to do something about the problems I have had with my training computer. I haven't gotten on with it at all, because it doesn't have a big red button to aim for. This causes me problems when I'm tired and press the wrong buttons as I always seem to default to looking for the big red button. That's probably because prior to my present monitor (of 1 year) I had been on Polar since 1992.

So I contacted PolarUK and asked them for some help.

2 days later one of these babies turned up!



A couple of training and play sessions with it, and I'm hooked.

I need to update my sponsor page on the website now. Maybe tonight.

It's good to come home to Polar.