Tonight I met my friend to do sprints and took the newly built S&M Steel panther and took it for it maiden voyage. I built it up with my friends Shimano DXR 175mm cranks to test them out and see how my knee felt with them. They felt great and so did my knee and I managed to complete all 12 sprints without any issues at all.
Unfortunately I forgot one of the reflectors for the timing system so we were not able to time our efforts tonight but from the feel of the bike and the cranks I am going to stick with the 175mm cranks once I get them off of my friend on Saturday at gates.
I am really glad that I bought the S&M as it feels the perfect size for me and is super responsive compared to the Dialled so I have found that 21..5″ Top Tubes is the best fit for me as both as both my 21″ and 21.25″ bikes felt a little cramped and the 21.5″ just feels right! That is lucky as I have ordered the Curtis with a 21.5″ Top Tube anyway 🙂
The only issue with the bike is that the brake is disgusting and the lever has a delay in coming back out! I ordered a new cable yesterday but it hasn’t been sent yet which is annoying. My friend is going to lend me an inner cable as he bought 100 of them from ebay before the winter so he has a bunch of spares 🙂 I will change out the cable before gates on Saturday and then hopefully the brake will feel nicer.
I was surprised how good I felt this evening as I have been feeling horrible all week and was feeling a bit off again before I left home to ride but once I started riding I felt fine. I also noticed that I am able to cope with 50m sprints easily now and I am not really out of breath any more which is an amazing step forwards. SO even if I have not got any faster over the winter my fitness has definitely improved.
Now that I am feeling better I am going to start in the gym as I only have 130 days (just over 4 months) until the Worlds and I am actually heavier than I was at the start of the year although my body composition is definitely better than it was.
I am planning to do the gym Monday, Wednesday and Fridays and I am going to do a general full body workout for now until my body gets stronger and I can start doing squats etc then I will move to 4 days a week split sessions.
I am planning on getting to the gym by 5:30 ish on Monday and then working out until about 7am so that I can get showered and back to the office to start working at 7:30. I may pop to the gym on Sunday morning early to see if my fob works then if there is an issue there should be someone in during the day to help me sort it out.
I plan to keep sprinting Tuesday and Thursday evenings and now that it is getting lighter I want to start doing full lap training and more skills training too. I really need to learn to Manual and jump urgently to start to carry speed more effectively on the track as my gates and sprint speed are pretty comparable to the faster guys but I lose speed as soon as I hit the jumps.