So this morning I woke up at 5am as planned but my piles were bleeding a lot so I decided not to stress them out too much and that I would ride into the office a bit later on when it wasn’t dark 🙁 I really hate this time of year as its super darlk again at 5am until the clocks go back then its feels like its dark all the time until may time 🙁 I really am not a winter person!
When I got up I did my weigh-in (up 1kg to 103.6kgs) then showered and got dressed then I grabbed the DMR and pumped its tyres up as it has Tubolitos so of course they were flat! I then put my laptop and bike lock in the rucksack and then rode into work it was a bit of a hard ride as the brake kept sticking on so I need to dial that in a bit and I had to stand up all the time until the long seat post arrives early next week. This was probably a good thing as sitting down on the bike seems to cause my piles to piss blood which is not fum 🙁 I am setting an alarm to get a doctors appointment to get the piles looked sorted as its been 2 weeks already and they are getting worse not better 🙁
When I got to work I found that my access to the server rooms had been taken away for some reason and as all the things that I had to do were in the server rooms I had a wasted journey other than shaking out all the issues on the DMR that is. I went into the main office and my access for that was fine so I sent a message to the office manager to ask her to sort my access out and rode home again! On the way home I struggled a bit more as the second part of the ride is all up hill and the 28 x 11 gearing is way harder than the gearing on all of my bmx’s so it will take a bit of getting used to but other than a bit where I had to get off and walk up part of the hill it was all good! My legs were a bit wobbly after standing up all the way there and back but that’s a positive not a negative so I will persevere with the jump bike for now! By the end of the ride home I was used to the handlebars being way further back than on the BMX so I think with a bit of perseverance I can get used to riding the Jump bike on the track too!
As my main goal is learning to jump for the rest of the year I really need to get used to the jump bike and get jumping so I am going to make sure that I only ride the DMR and the Black Market once its fully working from now on. Training moves to Saturdays now so I am going to book on and I will ride the Curtis for the training still but other than that I will ride the DMR!
When I got home I booted the laptop up and went straight to the Morrisons site and ordered a big joint of meat and a load of water and managed to get a tomorrow 13:00-14:00 delivery slot tomorrow so I will pop into Sainsburys while I’m out at the track at lunch time and grab another joint of beef and cook that for my lunch! I will buy my last takeout fryup in a sandwich this morning then I am 100% back on the carnivore diet from tomorrow as I have been really slack the past few weeks.
Burnham and Bristol have just announced their racing under the lights series which I think I will take part in this year as a pre-cursor to see how my training is going 🙂
To get ready for this I have decided to swap up my training once again (shocker) and add sprints to the mix instead of upper body days so I am planning to do gym Monday, Wednesday and Friday before work and then sprints Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays (Before Training). I also plan to start going to Burnham on Tuesday nights and Thursday nights for gates and also Bristol on Wednesday nights too.
I will do my Saturday sprints Saturday morning near the office and then rest until training and gates later on in the day.
I am planning to do my sprints near the office so I will go in and do the sprints then if I have time I will go to the gym and do my 10 minutes of sled afterwards and then ride home and get ready for work.
I am going to start doing my sprints from tomorrow morning so I will be able to get my timings sorted and see if there is time for sleds after the sprints or not! For now I will do my sprints on the DK on flat pedals to get me used to flats again and then later on I will add in the Curtis on clips into the mix now and again! I am over geared on the DK too so its good to have a mix of different gearing’s to work with! I want to change up my gearing on the the cruiser for 41 x 18 again so I will buy an 18 tooth sprocket and a new chain when I get paid then the Curtis is on 41 x 18, the DK is on 37 x 16 and my son’s Supercross is on 38 x 16 so depending which gearing I want to use I can grab a different bike!
Training starts again next Saturday so this week to sort out the timings of my sessions and get used to it before I add in gates and training next weekend!
My plan for sprints at the moment are 4 x 15 meter sprints with 3 minutes rest in between followed my 10 minutes rest then 4 x 30 m Sprints again with 3 minutes rest in between and then another 10 minute rest followed by 4 x 60m sprints again with 3 minutes rest between reps. After the sprints I will go to the gym and get in my sled pulls and pushes for 10 minutes to finish off the session.
I am going to finally start my sled work and gym leg sessions on Friday too!
I am thinking that I may try and get to gates at Bristol tonight to start getting in the habit of leaving the house in the evening as I haven’t done that for ages again and I am really starting to get back into the habit of slumping in front of the TV all the time which is not great!
My plan for gates sessions this winter is to be more focused and actually have a plan for training instead of just going there and doing gates and pumping the rest of the track! This winter I want to start doing the thing that I always plan to do which is 3 x gate to 1st jump as warm up then 1 x gate and full speed to end of first straight rest 3-5 minutes then 1 x gate and full speed to the end of the second straight then rest 3-5 minutes then 1 x gate and full speed to the end of the 3rd straight rest 3-5 minutes then gate and full lap burner. Then rest 10 minutes and do it all again then cool down and go home! This means that I will be forcing myself to do gates in a more race like setting and get out of the habit of trying to the 1st jump and then bumbling around the rest of the track! I need to make practice more race like to get into the habit of going flat out when I’m on the track when I am on the BMX. I can bumble about on the Jump bikes when I am practicing jumping at lunch times but when I am on the BMX I need to get in the habit of going flat out all the time! That is one thing that I have noticed about the good National riders is that they are always fast when they are on the track during practice and when not flat out they are at pumping the rest of the track so that is what I will start doing too!
I am going to make an effort and got to the track this lunch time to get started on learning to jump again as Burnham especially has a couple of death gaps on the first straight that need to be jumped to be fast so I will need to be able to jump them by the 19th of October! Or at least I need to be sending the second jump by then as that is the jump that separates the fast guys from the rest of the field. When I was healthy and racing last time I could get to that jump with the fast guys and then lose all my speed on it as I couldn’t jump and then struggle to get back in contention after that! So learning to jump will get me closer to the fast guys at least and also get a bit of space from the rest of the guys 🙂
When I get paid I need to buy another couple of sets of bars so that I can have the same bars on all 3 bikes that I use for sprints so they all have the same cockpit. I am still deciding which bars to get as the Curtis has Renthal bars, the DK has Staystrong straight bars and the Supercross has S&M race bars on it so I have a choice of all 3 of the best bars to have. I am thinking that the S&M bars are the best option as the Staytrong bars hurt my wrist and I like the Renthals but think that the S&M bars are less hassle as the Renthal’s keep getting creaky! I am thinking that I will swap the S&M bars off of my son’s Supercross for the bars on the DK then at the weekend I will play with both the S&M and Renthal bars on the Curtis at bath and Bristol and see which I prefer! Then when I get paid I will get another set of whichever I decide and then put them on the Curtis and stick the others on the DK and save the ones that I don’t use in case I change my mind 🙂
So I have just asked to get my Standard 125R Cruiser back from my friend to use as my winter bike so the Curtis is going to be saved for gates and training when I want to use flats and the Standard will be used the rest of the time! I will build it up with the bars from my son’s bike and a longer stem to make it the same length as the Curtis and I will put the 180mm GT cranks on it for now until I can afford new 180mm DXR cranks for the Curtis then the dxr’s on the Curtis will go on the standard.
I have decided that I will not bother building up the Standard OS20 just yet and jsut ride the cruisers for now! I will now also not bother getting a new front wheel for my son’s bike just yet as the DK can now hang up in my garage as I will be using the Standard 24″ for sprints so I may as well use it for my riding around town needs too 🙂 I will also use the 41t chain ring that I was going to use on the Curtis on the Standard as it already has an 18T Halo Clickster on it anyway 🙂
Literally just as I was going to leave for the track it started raining so I decided to not go riding today! It looks like we are doing gates at Bath tomorrow so I will do my training there tomorrow instead of Burnham as its closer! I have built the DK up to use for sprints tomorrow so I will get up and head to the office and do the sprints as planned and then go to the gym and do some sleds as well.