Taking ‘Periodisation’ to new extremes!

  After possibly over-training last winter….

   ….I’m going to take it really easy for the rest of this year.

  I didn't make the last race of the season, a fast ‘50’, as the weather didn't look conducive to fast times plus I had lost all interest in TT’ing to be honest (It really is such a daft pastime, isn't it?).  In fact I've done sod all bike riding, apart from one 2 hour ride home from Norwich about 3 weeks ago.

  My dog bite healed amazingly quickly but was quite uncomfortable holding the handlebars for a while, so that didn't help. Plus I caught a horrible virus about 3 weeks ago which I've struggled to shake off but feel much better this week. It all seemed to start shortly after having the flu vaccination but surely it couldn't have been that that made me so poorly? I seem to remember having a similar thing happen last time I had a flu jab and vowed never ever to have one again! A coincidence though?  Whatever, got to be better than getting really ill with ‘real’ flu like earlier this year and having to miss weeks and weeks at a time.

  Didn't really make massive inroads into my PB's. Didn't update my 50 time cos I never rode one! Improved my 10 time by a few seconds but both 25's I rode this year saw me about 30 secs down on the 2012 PB:

Best '10' 2013 - 21:02. New PB! Hell of an ordeal though!

Best '25' 2013 - 54:24. Another ordeal! PB remains at 53:50.

  Learned a lot this season though, mainly about racing and training sparingly.  The hard 3 hour rides do the job, but two a week is too much. I’ll do one per week this winter. To keep on top of my rowing ambitions, I’ll probably have an hour on the C2 machine in the gym once a week too.  That’s plenty I reckon.  More than enough in fact.

  (I’m actually heading out on the water for the first time with the Yare Boat Club fairly soon. Dead excited!!)

  So, no real training since the start of September but, viruses permitting, I’ll try for a steady row on weds (day off). If all goes okay, I’ll head out on the bike for a 3 hour stomp on Sunday. That’s what I’ll aim to do until the New Year and then I’ll see how things are going.

  On the equipment front, I think it’s about time I treated myself to something nice. I've been doing quite well on bargain basement kit and I’m reasonably pleased with most of it…. Except the frame. The Zipp rear disc and Rev X on the front are perfect for a bloke of my abilities as far as I’m concerned but I've never been happy with the frame. Poor fit, dubious aerodynamics (external brake and gear cables? In 2013?), sloppy ride and, well, generally knackered really.

  So I’m going to buy one of these. Yep, Captain Cosmic, hater of all things ‘bling’ is finally going to do it.

Just need to save a few pennies…..