Scalped :(

Hey there! For those that still tune in, and if not its still for my own personal benefit. Nearly 2 months since my last post so what on earth have I been up to? Commuting has been regular and consistant. Only 1 day in the car for those 2 months. Got caught up in a tornado when a wall of water  attacked me, more hurricane style weather and virtually every ride has seen me limp home drenched and wind swept.

Averages in November were apalling to say the least. 15 - 16 - 17 mph on the downhill 22miles to work yet I didn't feel bad in my self. Rides back home weren't much better 16-17-18mph. One Saturday whilst  belting down a hill, 2 spokes on my front wheel nearly sent me flying as they snapped off! So so lucky. I think the problem was that my front mud guard had been rubbing against the wheel wall and slowing  the plastic was being eroded until there was nothing holding it and mangled in my wheel. Have also completed a run a week in November.

December has been amazing, training wise. All work days commuted bar one and usually end with an Sqt A track session on the Sunday. One of the sessions started off with a 50 lap scratch race and one day we were lapping at 32mph until a few guys got brought off for dangerous riding ( the B line was being lapped instead of being half a lap apart) and we were down to about 28-29mph. In fact the guys who were brought off and bollocked belonged to a club I was thinking of joining lol. This garmin data catches the end of the race and the rest of the session.  I was up there up to the last lap but didn't contest the sprint as I'd 'run out of gears' in other words I cant spin my legs very quickly so when I stood up to sprint my legs were whirring but no extra power was being put down. Same story for every session. If a break went I was able to bring it back within half a lap, I would take  big turns on the front and still stay in whilst others dropped out, I think the main guys sprinting didn't do too much in the line though but for me to contest that sprint, no chance and it wasn't because I was too tired ( Actually looking at my heart rate of 180 maybe I was too tired). All that and my commutes were still at 16-17-18 mph. Tragic. Actually the one day I didn't commute was in January so full set in December.

Don't understand why outside Im so slow. I have ridden out 2 bouts of illness, just recovering from one now, nothing as bad as last year. One thing I have noticed is humidity has been in the high 90's for 90% of the 2 months, wonder if that has any effect.
 During the peak of my recent illness I got well and truely beaten by another roadie. I had just set off leisurely from a set of lights and whooooosh he goes past. I let him have 20m and try to catch up.  Didn't want to slipstream him as that would be too easy. Ugh ,my legs wont spin, tried higher gears, nothing but I manage to claw loads of time back on any inclines.  I was hoping he'd turn up this 6%er but he carried on into Manchester the flat way. I was gutted even though I could barely breathe as if I went too deep I'd start a massive wheezing and coughing fit and knew my illness held me back. Still only managed a 17mph average that day.  About 800 miles in December, 600 in Novemeber.

January has seen more running, the return of the dreaded gusty wind and more bleeding rain. I missed one commute and replace it with 2 totally boring turbo sessions. I bought a sufferfest video to alleviate the monotony but I didn't end up watching any of it anyway due to  looking at the floor. The second sesh I played some music which Im not usually a fan of but it deffo helped and I did some negative splits where I went faster and faster as time went on. I used my TT bike on the turbo and seem to have quite a nice position but totally wrecks my muscles the next day after hard efforts. The road bike is different as I could go really hard one day and still be fine the rest of the week.

Strava is very new to me but what a cool app/website to compare times with other guys and even get an idea what power you're outputting/need to output to be near the top. After uploading a few files I was quite surprised to see how well im doing even after only doing the odd ride here and there.  Going to pay more attention to this for the coming year. 

My fave beinbg this one which I've ridden once during a big sportive and has quite a few names down and I top them all :)

My Goals for the year ahead are to race and not chicken out, do a 10mile tt in 22mins but I'd only be happy with a 21, complete Liverpool olympic distance Triathlon and absolutely murder the flat bike course and do a 25mile tt with a  target time of 59:59.

The goals are relying on me not to put any weight on all year as I spent most of 2011 losing excess weight and ruining training due to a possible lack of protein.