Another day at hillingdon

My blog seems to be getting a little bit repetitive as once again on a saturday afternoon I head down to Hillingdon for the Imperial Winter Series.

Once again Paul Pickup stole the show with a fantastic break away ride with a strong rider from High Wycombe CC.

My legs were actually feeling a bit rubbish after a training ride on Wednesday evening which i'd done with some guys from Kingston Wheelers. This ride had involved a few too many short intervals which may be partly to blame for the sore legs.

Because of this I was pretty quiet all race and only had a couple of digs. One in the middle, which got a small gap with team mate Steve Golla but didn't last too long. Another one towards the end which helped split the field up a bit as a small group formed just off the front and a few people including Steve bridged across.

In the run in to the finish I had one last dig to break away from this group in an attempt to take the 3rd place, however legs weren't playing ball so ended up finishing somewhere in the break and somewhere in the top 10, not too many places away from Steve who had mistimed his sprint a little and had deserved more for his attacking riding throughout the race.

A few angry cyclists seemed to be sitting near me in mid-bunch today including one particularly charmless fella from Twickenham cc who threatened to "punch me in the face" - not exactly sure what for, but I thought how very nice of him.

With the road season proper fast arriving and also with work commitments it looks like i'll be an unlikely starter at Hillingdon for the next few rounds, although hopefully will be able to make the last one on the 16th of Feb.

Hillingdon Winter Series - round 10

Overall a good day for the Sigma Sport team with Wouter Sybrandy finishing 2nd, me 3rd and Steve Golla 4th.

Paul Pickup (BC private member) again managed to take the top spot and so spoilt the party a bit. He and Wouter had broken away early into the race and worked well together to quickly build a minute lead over the bunch.

The race split up into a couple of small chase groups but with Wouter and Pickup riding strongly they stayed away, and lapped the main bunch. Unfortunately, Wouter was narrowly pipped in the sprint after starting his sprint a little late. I got away from the chase group with 5 laps to ride and rode solo to the finish as did Steve who went with 4 to go.

Overheating problems on my turbo!

After having a go at a Maximal Aerobic Test earlier in the week I thought I would have a go at trying to find my threshold power by riding tts on my turbo

Originally I had planned to ride an hour tt on my turbo and gave this a go yesterday only to stop after less than 15 minutes feeling dizzy and overheated.

Not to be put off I realised the error I had made (i.e. leaving the windows closed) and decided to reschedule for this morning.

Set off with a steady pace for the hour with window open and fan on, but once again after about 20 minutes I started overheating.



However, again not to be put off I decided that a 20 minute test would have to suffice so after cooling off I went again this time pacing myself towards a 20 minute time trial by going off a little harder.



Think I either need to do more work on the turbo to acclimatize myself a bit better to exercising in the heat, or probably more likely limit myself to a 20 minute time trial and save the hour for doing outside on a good stretch of road in the good ole outdoors.

Doing a MAP test? Nothing to do with getting lost in the surrey hills

A ramp test on my turbo, early on a tuesday morning with the red hot chill peppers spurring me on: Not everyone's cup of tea.

My training diary

Below is data taken from my trainingpeaks software showing how much training i've been up to since the end of October when I started training for this season.

Bit complicated, but basically purple line shows the training "stress" averaged over the last few weeks, where as the blue line shows the average training "stress" over the previous month and a half. The yellow line is supposed to represent how fresh im feeling.

After using the turbo for pretty much the first time ever last week, and with the rubbish forecast for the next few days i've got a few interesting turbo sessions planned for this week.

This will include a maximal ramp test which I found on a website www.cyclecoach.com which I plan to do tomorrow morning, sounds tough!

This graph shows the distribution of my training into zones since I bought my Powertap.



From left to right these zones are:
AR Active Recovery
E Endurance
TE Tempo
TH Threshold
VM Vo2max
AC Anaerobic capacity

Calories burnt:


Hours spent cycling each week

Imperial Winter Series Race 9 - Saturday 12th January

Another friendly welcome received by all riders from the organisers of this popular winter series.

With cold but relatively clear and calm weather greeting the riders, it was likely that the race wouldn't split up too much.

I managed to start what was probably the most significant break of the day with series leader Paul Pickup (private member), second place in the series Chris Moores (Norwood Paragon) and another rider who has been strong throughout the series Mike Hill (Team Quest). However, perhaps with the overall series in mind Moores and Hill were unable or unwilling to ride through and so it all came back together.

With a few km to ride I jumped away only to be caught by Moores and Pickup once again, who then sat on and refused to come through. With 3rd place being my best option in that situation I chose to ease up and chance it in the sprint. I had a good position coming into the final corner until someone else chanced it up the inside and cut me up a little. Finished in 7th, with team mate Steve Golla sprinting to another good 4th place and reinforcing his 3rd place in the series with me still in 4th place overall behind Pickup and Moores. Pickup looks set to pick up the series title at this point, although with 3 sigma riders planning to ride next week there should be some exciting racing action to come.

Results of the imperial winter series are all on their website:

Hillingdon 5th January

Must have fallen asleep at beginning of race, missed the break, couldn't get away from the bunch despite several tries, but at least trying meant I kept the pace up enough in the middle of the race to help prevent pack from being lapped by a break of 4 that worked excellently together including race winner and series leader Paul Pickup.

Happy new year

Back from my little holiday in Northern Ireland. I managed to get out every day for a short spin normally just riding up and down a little climb that starts right at the bottom of the lane, the intensities for these rides were normally decided by the amount of sleep I had managed to get the previous night.

Far too much eating so have put on a little bit of weight, so back to watching what I eat for a few weeks I reckon.

Annoyingly my bike was left behind in Dublin by British Midland on the way back , however got it back by courier today so should be able to head up to Hillingdon again tomorrow.