Lazy Days

Some time between posts, but my rate of progress has been the same.... Quasi no training at all, my `love handles` are bulging proudly and i'm not feeling very fast or nimble of the bike..

We are currently getting our house ready to sell at the moment, so all available free time is devoted to odd jobs i've been avoiding for the past 6 years... Then we have to start looking for houses to buy!

On the plus side i've purchased a everyday road bike, and a dedicated time trial bike. Also, my 2nd powertap SL has arrive back from warranty so I have a LOT of toys.. just need to make good use of them... As soon as or house hunting settles down (and the weather warms up) i can see a lot of quality miles on the horizon..

In the mean time, the focus is on base endurance so lots of rides at very low intensity... After about 6-8 weeks i'll be ready to start upping the ante again with good fitness anticipated for the whole of summer...

Quick, somebody help! I've got a flat.....

After 6 months of solid work I've finally hit that wall.

At the beginning of the year, i had a few goals that i desperately wanted to achieve. First was to get fit and start being competitive in criteriums, with the ultimate goal of winning and progressing up through the grades.

Well after 4 months of hard work i got to a reasonable level of fitness and was holding my own in criteriums with maybe just a bit of inexperience keeping me off the podium. My breakthrough came a few weeks ago and I've got to say that winning rocks!

Now I'm in a slump, the weather has been non compatible for regular training - and i really don't have any goals to strive for. Those two factors combine to form a general malaise for anything to do with riding let alone getting up early for riding in what can only be described as miserable weather.

So I have to write up a list of goals i need to achieve for the next 6 months. What are they? I'm glad you asked! :)

First is to regain my fitness, then bite the bullet and move up from C grade to B grade. Better my current ITT performance over 25 and 43km distances by > 2 minutes. Then choose 1 or 2 open races towards the end of the year and train my socks off with the goal of being competitive.

Having goals is the only was to patch the flats that are inevitable after hard goal oriented training regimes. I already have that spark back that i so dearly need at 5am in the morning for those long bitterly cold morning rides.

Here's a performance manager graph of the last 6 months. Blue line indicates my CTL (chronic training load). Note the rapid decline at the end of the chart!!!!