2016 review part 1

With 2016 coming towards an end, I thought I would write a short round up of the highs and lows of my cycling season, before moving on to writing about my lofty goals for 2017 in the coming week. As student doctors, we’re taught to reflect at every opportunity, something that I mainly resent and avoid, but it is good practice to think about what went well and what I can improve, so here goes!!! I’ll start with the highs and then move on to the lows at another point.

The highs

1. Smashing my 10 mile PB into oblivion

Coming into 2016, I knew that one of my strengths was my time trial. Perhaps due to the fact that I can be quite meticulous with my bike set up and love constantly tinkering, I love the aero side of it as well as the pure power production, or perhaps because it is just myself against the clock, I always get the best out of myself at a TT.

In 2015 I had started targeting the elusive sub 20 minute time for 10 miles.  I was getting faster slowly, but not by much. I managed 4 times to go under 20.30 and it was starting to get rather frustrating. Cue May this year and on a slightly cool and damp day in Hertfordshire, everything clicked and I powered round 10 miles in only 19 minutes 32 seconds. Phew. It was a huge sense of relief to finally do it and then the icing on the cake was lowering that again to 19.19 in Julian Jenkinson’s memorial event in August. Considering I am on a TT bike that cost me around £500 compared to the multiple thousands of pounds worth of bikes around me, I’ll take that.

2. Doing the Flanders sportive

Yes perhaps not a racing goal as such, but in April I went out to Belgium and rode with a great group of friends around the 250km Tour of Flanders sportive route. It really was a dream come true. Flanders is my absolute favourite race of the year and to get to experience smashing it along and up the cobbles was an absolute privilege. Hopefully I will be back again soon.

3. Tour of Sussex

Once again, following on with the theme of having fun rather than necessarily winning or hitting a goal. The Tour of Sussex was really a turning point for me and returning to road racing. I had completely gone off the boil with racing in a bunch and to be honest the motivation and confidence was pretty low. The Tour, despite being a bit amateur in its organisation at times was once again a great few days spent with riders who have both guided me into cycling and kept me company on those boring long training rides. It was fantastic to be able to ride alongside them through my home county of Sussex, and that last stage which went up Beachy Head 9 times was an absolute brute! I ended up finishing 15th overall but no doubt next year I’ll be back for more…

4. Downton 2 – day

I love the Downton. Its great, 3 short stages, no stresses of BC racing, just a good bunch of riders having a great end of season race. Glenn who runs it also happens to be a legend so all in all, it just works.

I got top 10 in all 3 stages, finishing 4th overall despite having a fairly poor TT by my standards. However the biggest thing by far that struck me was that I finished 5th in the road race.I have always convinced myself I can’t sprint and can’t climb so to come 5th in an uphill sprint may just convince me to be slightly more confident at times, something I definitely need to work on fo 2017!

5. National 10 mile TT champs

Last but not least, I got my first taster of the time trial scene on a national level, riding in the national 10 near Petersfield. It actually went surprisingly well, finishing 40th out of 120, with the field stacked with big hitters in the top 20. It’s definitely a benchmark for 2017 and something I will hopefully improve on in the colours of Primera!!!

Overall, not a bad year… But one that perhaps didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped in terms of results.

In fact, my best results came at the BUCS track championships, a bitter sweet affair in March, which deserves a bit more time and thought put into writing about than at 7am on a Wednesday morning.

I’ll be back with the ‘not-so-highs’ in the next couple of days and then its onto 2017, onwards and upwards!!!!

 

TJ

Off to Guildford

Well, Basingstoke was a blast, but as is the nature of medical training all through to being a consultant and beyond, we are forever packing our bags and moving on. Therefore for the next 4 weeks of placement I am staying in Guildford, an apparent gateway to the mythical ‘surrey hills’ or as I see it… ‘MAMIL central’.

Basingstoke was, in all honesty, probably my favourite place I’ve ridden a bike for an extended period of time. It has a reputation for being boring and not much goes on, which is perfect for cycling. As soon as you’re out of town there is a myriad of lanes that are virtually unpopulated and so there’s rarely a need to cycle along a busy road or come across too much traffic. So far however, it appears Surrey is the opposite. Yes, there are some extremely well known climbs, box hill for example, but it appears getting to these places usually seems to involve some minor A road. I guess I can’t have it all my way!

In terms of training, it is still going fantastically! I have been hitting the sessions set by Bikestrong consistently and I’m feeling really quite good on the bike. Hopefully a good omen for 2017. I continue to be impressed by the variation in sessions I’m getting and Mike’s continual communication in order to make sure we’re getting the best out of each other. I’m just hoping I can get some wins for all his hard work come next season!

Looking to Christmas, I’ll be trying to get more miles in over the break, almost a necessity as I’m limited during the week whilst on placement, but it will also be a chance to get back to my parents and eat a fair few mince pies (not too many though!).

That’s it for now. Keep plugging on through winter everybody!

November wrap up

November is probably one of the more boring months of cycling, unless you’re into getting muddy doing a bit of cyclocross. Most people are just getting in to the winter training, after an end of season break and its full of long, boring miles in the windy, cold, wet conditions that the UK so happily throws at us.

Not for me however. Yes, I can’t change the weather, but I’ve now been working with Bikestrong for a month and its keeping the training varied, stimulating and for once, is not full of mind numbing base miles. Of course, there’s still a time and place for that and I am still getting out at the weekend for long rides, but I’m also doing more intervals than I ever thought I could stomach. The extra motivation of a coach to report back to has had me pushing harder and digging deeper than before and the results are starting to speak for themselves. I haven’t ‘ballooned’ in weight like previous years and recently did an FTP test which was pleasantly surprising… 358w for 20 minutes. Not all that shabby considering I’ve got a couple of months to bump that number up over winter before the new season starts! I essentially haven’t dropped off at all and now its all about pushing on and hitting 2017 hard!

Off the bike, I headed over the Gent… for more biking. The Gent 6-day is an incredible experience for any cycling lover and warrants a full post in its own right, something I’m hoping to do over the weekend. There’s been a few niggles in motivation and strength and I’ve definitely identified that I need to work a lot on my explosivity if I’m going to be competitive in the tough road races. The powers there, now I’ve just got to learn to hurt myself and go deep in the pain cave when responding to and initiating attacks.

The first race with Primera-Teamjobs will be at the Perfs Pedal road race in Portsmouth on the 12 February, something that it appears the new UCI continental team BIKE channel Canyon will also be targeting. Oh the fun. It’s going to hurt. But its what I’ve signed up for and I’m bloody looking forward to testing myself against the big boys!!!

On to December and its much of the same, keeping going through the cold and getting quite a lot of sessions in on the rollers. I’ll check in soon with perhaps a more exciting post but for now happy cycling!

Dealing with the troughs.

Form is a funny thing. It comes and goes, and if you blink you miss it. Some days you feel great on the bike, the next like you’ve been through a tumble dryer backwards and are riding a completely different machine.

I imagine with a solid training plan, executed well, you can just about to start to get a little bit of control over it, planning when you will hopefully be at your best and knowing when you may not feel quite as fresh. But you can never get away from the fact that you cannot be ‘on form’ the whole time. At this point in the year this is a crucial piece of information never to forget. The training is different to in the summer, lots more volume, less intensity. Inevitably this makes you feel a bit stale on the bike but what its doing in the background is slowly turning that 2 litre engine into a whopping 5 litre V8, ready to be supercharged and turbocharged come spring, its the base that next season will be built upon.

This week its been important to remind myself of this. A cold early last week meant I was off the bike for a couple of days and its just meant that I haven’t felt brilliant in training. Jumping on the rollers after a day in the hospital takes some motivation at the best of times so add to that knowing you’re legs aren’t responding exactly how you want and I was definitely tempted a couple of times to not bother. But I got on regardless. I knew if I could just get through the first 10 minutes I’d be okay.. and I was. I’ve pretty much nailed every session for the last 7 days now and I’m just starting to come back out of that trough. Its these days, these sessions, where we get one up on the competition.  It’s the difference between staying away at the end of a race or being caught with 200m to go.

And that’s the motivation. Winning races. Winning races for everyone that puts time and effort into my adventure in cycling. I’m not going to get soppy and name everyone but I warn you that if I hit my goals I may just do that. Because when motivation is low and you’re struggling, you have to knuckle down, remember why you’re doing this to yourself and dig deep.

Lets bring on 2017.

End of week report

Winter training is in full swing, and it looks like I’ve got a good going pair of man boobs to try and get rid of in the next few months!

Its coming to the end of another great week of training in the bank and I thought this would be an ideal time to reflect on my last couple of weeks on the bike.

First of all, and non-bike related, my current medical placement at Basingstoke hospital is going really well and I’ve got the bug back for medicine. This has perhaps translated into good feelings on the bike and I’m on my way to being the fittest I’ve ever been by far. Its all good signs for next season and I’m really excited to be heading towards it already. Perfs is only just over 3 months away and I’m sure that time will fly by!

My week this week consisted of 12 hours, with a mixture of road and turbo riding. I’ve managed to fit in 3 sets of intervals alongside 2 easy road rides and a 70 mile team get together today. This is off the back of a 16 hour week last week and surprisingly, I’m not really that fatigued at all. I’m feeling (reasonably) fresh and the form on the bike is good. I imagine this is down to starting with my coach at Bikestrong. I can’t honestly say how much I have benefited from the coaching so far, as its early days, but overall its going fantastically well. The communication from my coach is second to none, and I have comments on my sessions only minutes after uploading it. I’m sure even Team Sky aren’t that quick! The trainings been hard but also flexible around my studies and allowing me to get out and do a bit of what I want to do as well as horrible grimey interval sessions indoors. I can only hope that this is a sign of things to come and that I can really move on to some serious racing and serious results next year.

We also had our first team get together today, riding out from Bournemouth on a loop up to Shaftesbury. It was a fairly easy 70 mile ride but good to get miles in with teammates and get to know each others riding styles and form. There was good chat and its really got me excited about next year. I think Primera-Teamjobs is one to look out for on results sheets all over the south come 2017!

Into next week and I’ve got another hard week of training alongside my medical placement, but the motivation is sky high, and I quite honestly don’t know where my limit is yet!

Exciting times ahead with Primera-Teamjobs and Bikestrong UK.

So, double exciting news for next year on the bike!

Firstly, I won’t be riding for the university anymore. I have been lucky enough to be offered a place to race with Primera-Teamjobs and am super stoked and excited about what this entails. The road team has got a really exciting line up for next year and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion we’re going to show some other ‘bigger’ teams up at points over the year! There will be 8 riders riding for the team in races over the south and further afield and we’re lucky enough to be supported by Primera Sports and Teamjobs recruitment, as well as Breeze Volkswagen and Ellis Jones solicitors.

On top of this, I have decided to work with my first ever coach. Up to this point, I have (partially successfully I would hope) coached myself completely, but am really happy to be working with Bikestrong UK next season. I have been wanting to get a coach for a while, as it adds both another brain to the training plan, but also some accountability. I imagine those days when I ‘just don’t fancy an interval set’ will be harder to avoid as no one knows I just sat on the sofa eating chocolate instead if I am my own coach. It also adds a sensible second person looking at your training and telling you when you’re overdoing it and when to push on and peak to achieve your goals, something I struggle to do myself.

Enough of the advertisement however, and on to my own personal ambitions and thoughts. Firstly, it is hugely motivating and I’ve been feeling great on the bike, training with a renewed energy and am feeling genuinely excited about what next year is going to bring. Over the course of this year, I managed to develop from ‘getting round’ road races to being one of the stronger riders in the local regional races. I feel that being part of a team that has more emphasis on getting out there, riding as a team and looking for some big results will only push me on further. On a personal level, I really want to aim for the local 2/3/4 races around Southampton and Bournemouth, with a view to getting my first win on the road. Everyone dreams of riding into the last few hundred meters of a road race with a decent lead, solo, hands in the air. You never know, next year may just be that year!

On top of that, I want to really get stuck in with the bigger regional and nationals level events. I have unfinished business with racing at this level after giving it a go a couple of years ago, when I weighed more and had less power! (A bad combination….). I want to be able to mix it in these races and genuinely be happy about my level on the bike. If I can help a couple of the younger riders on the team who have an incredible amount of talent as well in these races, by being at the pointy end come the end of them, I’ll be super satisfied. If I can get a result myself, then even better, but the team doing well is the ultimate goal.

Along with this, I’m hoping that by racing more, and training in a more focussed way, I can push on again as a by product in time trials. I’ve heard that an 18 is the new 19 and will be hoping to go well under 18 minutes for 10 miles and under 50 minutes for a 25. I’ll also be looking at the BC national champs and even perhaps the TTT champs.

I’ll be sitting down however with the new team and coach in the next couple of weeks and can hopefully put some concrete plans in place for world (or maybe just Hampshire) domination come 2017.

Exciting times ahead.

Primera-Teamjobs on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Primera-TeamJobs-413695445473295/?fref=ts

Bikestrong UK – http://bikestrong.co.uk/

Ciao

Night rider

Recently, and with a little help from a certain prize I’ve won recently (or two) I’ve been really enjoying getting out in the evening and riding in the dark. Crazy you might think, but these rides can be incredibly beautiful in their own way, and anythings better than the rollers right?

The thing that’s been getting me out is a great little light from Exposure lights, the Exposure axis. Now I am in no way affiliated to the company but I do have to say its an incredible piece of kit. It packs a decent punch for its small size and weight which is more than enough for me to blast along the local lanes just as fast as in daylight. The burn time is good too, with it lasting a couple of hours on max (which is only really needed at 20mph+) and a massive 10 hours on the least bright setting, which is perfect for climbing.

But this isn’t the only goody which I’ve been enjoying recently. I was also lucky enough to win A WHOLE NEW BIKE. Which, by the way, is amazing. Its an aluminum machine with Shimano 105 and Mavic wheels from ROSE. At first I thought it is the absolute perfect match to a winter training bike, but as I ride it more and more I’m ever so tempted to sell on the Cannondale and just use it for everything, from long slow winter rides to smashing round crits in summer. It just fits perfectly and I’m absolutely loving riding it. It certainly adds up to far more than the sum of its parts.

Along with this, I’ve got some new bright yellow gloves and oversocks from Planet X to keep my peripheries warm. Something that shouldn’t be underestimated when the sun goes down.

Anyway, so far its sounding all a bit like an advert, but thats just because I’m loving my riding at the moment. The thrill of riding after dark is not one to be missed, but only with the right kit and the ability to see ahead of you. The sensations are great, a little bit more adrenaline combined with a heightened sense of whats around you is fantastic and I thoroughly recommend giving it a go if you’re able to!

Downton 2-day classic. A weekend of top 10s.

At the end of every year I’ve raced a bike, the season is always fittingly brought to an end by the Downton 2-day classic. Always on or around the first week of October, the TLI race run by local legend Glenn Longland marks both the end of the road racing year and the start of Autumn, as the Sunday morning is always a cold one!

The race is relatively relaxed, and is a great wind down, with a great mix of abilities and short sharp stages. It starts on the Saturday afternoon with a 2.4km hill climb prologue, then precedes onto a 45km handicap road race and finishing with a 24km time trial on the Sunday morning. My best finish before this year was a meager 8th overall but this year I had my sights set higher, with a top 5 the goal with possibly the strongest field ever set to take to the start.

Stage 1

The first stage is a strange one. A 2.4km ‘hill climb’ prologue. TO be honest, it’s the easiest hill you’ll ever find on a hill climb, but that doesn’t make it any less of an effort, you just travel at 20mph rather than 10. My tactics going in to it was to take the first flat section easy, launch up the steep part of the climb and hopefully have enough in the tank to take me to the top, along the longest draggiest piece of road known to man (Probably not true).

Warming up I felt quite stale, and off the start I knew I wasn’t on a great ride. My heart rate never quite hit what it should have, topping out at 177, rather than the 180ish it should have, and I had the strange sensation that despite pushing myself hard, there was just that 1% that I couldn’t extract. Still, I rode 4.14, a personal PB for the climb by quite a few seconds and also a time that would have taken a podium spot in previous years. Oh and a whopping power PB of 495w average power. On reflection, this probably showed me that really I should have been higher up than the 8th place I took, had I put a little thought into staying aero on the bike whilst doing 20 uphill… Lessons learnt once again.

Stage 2

Off in the scratch group, meant that the 15 fastest riders from the first stage started a whopping 9 minutes down on the first group out on the road. As the race was only 45km, it meant we had to work together from the gun and resulted in a fast, fast, race. The circuit around Downton, to Brook and back through Nomandsland isn’t particularly hard, but the constant up and downs takes it out of the legs, and to average nearly 28mph for the first lap was crazy. Crazy fast, but not actually too hard. It seemed the legs were eventually warming up.

We caught the front of the race much earlier than we thought, with only about two thirds of the race distance gone. This resulted in a slowing of the pace slightly and some attacks came and went, but it was always going to finish in an uphill dash for the line in Lover. Its a climb I both love and hate, slowly getting harder for about 1km and finishing on a steep 10% ramp. 2 years ago I managed a 3rd place but other than that, I’ve always struggled with it.

Knowing my sprint wasn’t great, I went early, with about 60s of climbing left. I pushed the pace hard and then drilled it on the front. Not enough to gap the group but enough to cause riders to drop right off the back. Leading with 100m to go I kicked again, but didn’t have enough compared to the lighter riders around me and came home 5th, with the same time as the leader. A marked improvement on my usual hilltop finish antics but I still had work to do.

After the road race, I’d moved up to 6th overall, having distanced a few of the scratch group riders with the pace of the race. It was all tight at the top and down to the Sunday morning TT

Stage 3

The race of truth. A tough, 24km circuit around the forest. It’s a course I enjoy and hate at the same time. It’s tough in that it is real hard to find a rhythm at points, with a heavy surface and some road furniture to deal with. It essentially has 3 segments. A fast first section for 5 miles, followed by a hilly second section and a flat run to the line that has an inordinate amount of potholes and bumps.

It all started well, and I was holding good power at the top of the main climb of Godshill. But it started to unravel slightly on the forever dragging road to Roger Penny Way. Having not ridden my TT bike enough recently, my upper body was straining holding the position whilst trying to put the power out up the long drags, and once I hit the last 5 miles and all its lumps and bumps, my back was fried and with a steamed up visor, I was hitting every little hole in the road. I was struggling with putting the power down and I was mega disappointed in myself

At the finish, I’d recorded 33.13. A whopping PB for the course and faster than the winner last time the course was used. As had been the them of the weekend though, 3 riders were stronger than me and rightly smashed my mark out the park. 4th in the TT was once again a little disappointing, but my time was good and I had to be happy, especially as I wasn’t on the best of form. This showed in the power numbers, having averaged only 345 for 33 minutes.

Overall

My strong TT time meant that I finished 4th overall, behind Mike Ford, Matt Downie and Oscar Hutchings, 3 deserving riders of their podium places. I took home a cheeky prize for each stage and ended up with a nice little pot of earnings for the weekend.

On a personal level, I had to be happy with my riding. Although the TT was slightly disappointing I definitely havve improved on the road racing front. My tactical play in the finish and my more useful kick was already an improvement on last weekend, it’s just a shame its now the end of the year. But if I can make that improvement in just 1 week, with some focus hopefully I can turn it right round by next year.

Onwards and upwards

TJ

BJW road race report. Sprint practice needed.

Sometimes the hardest races end up with the simplest of finishes. And so was the case with the Bournemouth Jubilee Wheelers road race on Sunday. On paper, a tough tough race, with over 5000ft of climbing and a strong field. Add in a bit of wind and I didn’t have any doubts that the race would end up in pieces.

However, it seems my ‘racing brain’ was very wrong. The race came down to essentially a bunch sprint up a 300m short sharp hill, won by Warren Jesse of Pedal Heaven. It also happens to be possibly my least favourite type of finish. I roled in at the back of a depleted bunch, disappointed, in 21st place.

Above – Trying to split it up over the top of the climb. The elastic just wouldn’t ever quite snap!

The race was the last BC race of the year for me and I had high hopes. I’ve been feeling good in training for a while now and the weight has stayed stable at around 76kg, a massive improvement on what it usually is. Yes, I undersotod beforehand that I was still by far hardly the lightest guy there but surely 5kg makes a huge difference in a race as hilly as this. To a part it did, and I was one of the stronger guys in the race. It started out straight up the main climb out of wool, and the legs felt nice and light, spinning up nicely. So good in fact that I decided to attack up the climb 2 laps into the 9 lap race. Sometimes I never learn. I got a gap up the climb and tried to sustain it on the drag up to the top of the course, into a headwind… stupidly. I knew a headwind meant it would be hard to get away here but I ignored my brain and paid the price, getting caught shortly after. This seemed to trigger one of the most bizzare races I’ve ever raced in. Attack after attack. Counter attack after counter attack. With absolutely nothing sticking. It was 2 hours 20 of everyone trying to get in the breakaway. Stop, start, stop, start. After about an hour, I started to become convinced that surely the next move would be the big one, the one that stuck. And so repeatedly tried to get in every move. It was great to feel that strong, to be able to play my hand multiple times on a hilly course, but ultimately, it was all wasted energy as the race came to the last climb as a group of 30 or so from the 60 starters. I rolled in 21st, unable to sprint as, well, because I can’t sprint. And I had an epiphany. I need to work on my sprinting.

It seems so obvious. Almost every race comes down to a sprint of some sort. Whether its a 2up sprint from a breakaway or an 80 rider sprint in a circuit race. It almost always selects the winner. And I used to be able to do it. Not amazingly well, but I could do it. I’d know I could pick off a top 10 in a sprint through just being a bigger, more powerful rider than others around me. But, as it slowly dawned on me whilst laying down in the verge, I’ve never given it the thought to actually, well, train it. And in that brief moment, I jjust couldn’t understand why.

Over the last 2 years, my aerobic power just keeps going up and up. My tiime trialling is still getting faster and faster. But my sprint has slowly, unwittingly, been getting slower and slower. Which means just one thing. This winter, the focus isn’t going to be on just getting faster over 20 minutes for a 10 mile TT, it’s going to be on being rapid for 15-30s as well. I need to research the sessions that help, but clearly a good place to start will be doing 15-30s sprints. I guess its specific if nothing else! And hopefully it will help me improve my race results on the road. I’m only getting stronger and stronger still, but as some point I need to convert this ‘strength’ into race wins. Its what people measure you on and what its ultimately all about at the end of the day.

Back to the race and I was lucky enough to have a power meter for it, by virtue of picking one up for a friend the day before. It was interesting but I also remembered why you don’t really need one racing. It’s not about how many watts you can do, its about when you put them down and what everyone else is doing around you. But for anyone interested, here’s a summary of the race,

Length – 94.58km

Duration – 2.29.15

Elevation gain – 1463m

Average cadence – 99

Max cadence – 146

Average power – 268w

Normalised power – 318w

Maximum power – 1190w

Next up is the Downton 2-day classic this weekend. the last race of a long season. The target is a top 5 and it’ll be tough work. Its probably the strongest ever field for the race but I’ll report back next Monday, hopefully with a better result!

 

TJ

Revolve24 photos

Rather than clogging up the report I’ll add photos as I get them here!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.