This weekend started off with an ebike ride to my parents house in the morning which felt easy at the time but hurt once I had stopped:
I had to ride most of the way on the second level or tour mode to make sure that I had enough battery left for all the big hills near my parents house that would kill me if I had to ride up them without a motor!
As it turned out the ride was pretty simple with the ebike and putting the bike in Turbo made it so easy to get up the really steep hills and the tour mode was fine for the rest of the time.
As I was riding the bike more I realised that in order to get a lot of help from the motor you have to drop the gears down and spin otherwise the motor does not help. This is totally the opposite to how I ride the road bike so felt really uncomfortable until the last couple of hills where I got the hand of it and flew up them with little effort at all!
I got to my parents house with 6 miles of battery left so I judged the battery life really well which was lucky! I have to say although the ebike is not the style of bike that I prefer and handles really well and is not really designed to ride 22+ miles in one go it made the ride way more pleasant and basically flattened out the hills and made it feel like I rode on a flat route instead of the hilly one that it was (1391ft of elevation). It was also faster on a bunch of segments that I have gone before which is expected but not by as much as I thought that it would be but that could well be due the the style of the bike being really upright so not aerodynamic at all!
I also rode in normal clothes as well instead of my cycling clothes so that will not have helped either!
Saturday I went to Training at the track for race day and as almost everyone was racing the next day we did races to the hole-shot line instead of the whole track. My legs were super sore from the ebike ride yesterday which surprised me a bit but was not unexpected as I had basically spun the whole way there! So although I didn’t have the max efforts that I would on a normal bike I had a much higher cadence rate to riding normally, hence the soreness I guess! I was pleased with how I rode apart from in the final which was the only race that I was under pressure and it really showed as I bonked everything as lost a lot of speed on the first jump which meant that I was 2nd in the A final so not bad I guess but it would have been closer if I had ridden properly! We then did some more practice and then I stayed for a bit to run some gates so that the coach could practice swapping bikes.
Sunday I got up at 5 and picked up my brother from work and dropped him off at home and then went to meet my lift to Andover for the first South Regional of the year. There were a staggering 498 riders booked in which is more than double of that of a SW regional and in the cruiser class there were 90 15+ Male riders with 23 of them being 50+!! And the majority of riders being National Riders too! Needless to say it was a hard day of racing as the Andover track is really long and the level of competition was high! I had a really fun day and will have gained a lot of fitness from it but I didn’t get the results that I wanted at all as every lap my legs stopped working before the end of the 3rd straight! The biggest example of this was the B final where I was 2nd until the end of the 3rd straight and finished 5th!!!
On a positive note my gates and 1st straights were really good and I was top 3 to the start of the second straight in every race I think, all be it a way behind the top guys!
Time wise, my fastest time was a long way behind the fasters times:
| Moto1 Gate | Moto1 Lap | Moto2 gate | Moto2 lap | Moto3 gate | Moto3 lap | Final gate | Final lap | |
| Me | 2.775 | 47.14 | 2.779 | 47.076 | 2.983 | 46.59 | 2.741 | 47.441 |
| Brit No4 | 2.539 | 41.063 | 2.499 | 41.82 | 2.506 | 40.589 | 2.563 | 39.053 |
| Difference | 0.236 | 6.077 | 0.28 | 5.256 | 0.477 | 6.001 | 0.178 | 8.388 |
Weirdly enough my 3rd moto I had a really bad start but had my fastest lap time of the day as my legs held out pretty much to the line don’y ask me why as I was putting more effort in on that lap than any of the others??? As you can see I was consistently 0.180 or more seconds slower out of the gate (not sure where the cable was that timed the start) and at least 5 seconds a lap slower!! My lap times were so much slower as I was basically holding on from the 2nd berm onwards as my legs had gone which is most likely due to the fact that the track is not very flowy so when you can’t manual you are basically losing speed on every jump! A lot of the jumps I should have been manualing to not lose speed but I was unable to as my manual is not good enough! Also the ones that I tried to manual I failed so I was constantly having to try and pedal between jumps to get momentum back only to lose it on the next jump. I also noticed in the final that the fast guys get on the pedals way earlier than I did out of the first berm so were hitting the second straight with a lot more speed.
I am glad that I raced yesterday as it will definitely help with my fitness going forwards and also it highlighted areas that I have to improve before the worlds which are basically the same areas that I have had to improve for the past few years, mainly improving my skills to carry speed (pumping, manuals and jumping) and fitness.
I finished building the jump bike this morning so I will take it to the container in a bit so that I can ride it at lunch times when I go to the track on the ebike and I can work on jumping and manuals on it during the week. I am also going to start going to the gym and lifting weights on Tuesday and Thursday nights after I have finished sprints. I am thinking that I may get more done going to the gym after sprints as I am already out of the house and I am not tired so I may as well get a gym session in before bed! I figured that I should take one last photo of the jump bike for posterity, while it is brand new and not muddy 🙂
Also as my Son had a total meltdown at training this weekend as he was beaten by a 10 year old! We have decided to revisit the idea of doing pump tracks at the weekends when I am not racing instead of training so that we can both work on our bike skills! I also want to get some road bike rides in if I can to try and gain fitness and also kick start my weight loss as I’m gaining weight at the moment instead of losing it even though a lot of the added weight is muscle I would still like to start dropping weight if possible!
As the first National race is only 5 days away it is too late to get any improvements before the weekend but I am aiming to get some improvements by the Cyclopark National in 33 days!
The difference in gate times shows that I am getting faster from the sprint training so there are some positives I didn’t notice any knee pain all day yesterday which is amazing. I am hoping by Cyclopark to have my knee strong enough to move back onto 175mm cranks which will help out of the gate at least! I also dropped my onyx rear hub off at the Crucial tent yesterday and they are going to build it up with a 24×1.75 Sun Envy rim and normal spokes and it will hopefully be ready by the weekend to ride at Manchester. This will probably mean that my gates will be at a similar level to the faster guys as the Onyx hub is way better out of the gate than the Profile Elite is! Also the bearings in the profile elite are a bit knackered so they are gripping all the time which makes it more tiring to ride and is not helped by my lack of fitness! The Only on the other had speeds up when you freewheel so makes riding way easier! I am hoping that this means that I get less tired and that will result in faster overall lap times!