I woke up at 5:30 this morning and got ready and went to the BMX Track car park and measured out my sprints distances and where to put the sprint stand and then put my cones down and did a bit of a warmup and tested the S&M Long Johnson Seat post. The seat post worked fine but it was really hard to tighten up the seat clamp enough to stop it moving when I sat on it. I guess once I get the correct size it will be better and also as I lose weight it will drop less too 🙂
As it was raining I decided not to take my timing system as I am not sure if it is fully waterproof or not. I am doing gates tomorrow night so I can get some timings from there anyway and they are more race specific too so I can see how the training is paying off in a race like situation.
Once I got to the 100m mark I realised that there would not be enough run off for me to not hit the end wall so I moved to the other side of the car park and measured and marked the start line, 30m, 60m and 100m lines as well as the sprint stand placement so that I can easily setup and replicate the session next time.
The new position gives me at least 30m run off before the wall after the 100m mark so that will be plenty of space to drop enough speed to turn before the wall even in the wet. The only slight issue with the new spot is it is where all the dog walkers walk into the complex so there are times when I have to wait for them to move before I can start a sprint! I can live with that and it is way better than hitting a wall at 20mph 🙂
I then did 3 x 30m Sprints with 3 minutes rest in between sets and then I took a 10 minutes rest.
I then did 3 x 60m sprints with 3 minutes in between sets and then I ran out of time and had to head home so I did a few lap of the carpark to cool down and then packed up and drove home.
On my next session on Friday I will not have to mark out the distances so the setup time will drop from about 30 minutes to about 5 so I will have plenty of time to do all 3 sets of sprints and still get home in plenty of time to get ready for work which will be nice.
Over the weekend I plan to mark out the distances for my uphill and downhill sprints so that I am ready to go next week on all 3 kinds of sprints with minimum setup time. On the uphill and downhill sprints I am going to do 30m, 60m and 90m then I only have to mark out 3 distances each way which makes it easier to find the correct line each time and losing 10m on the longer sprints will not make a whole lot of difference anyway.
I really liked the way the new bars felt and they feel way better than my old setup so I will stick with them for now. The S&M Redneck Stem also looks and feels more solid than a top loader stem as well so I will stick with that too. I’m not sure what it is about top loader stems that I don’t like but I don’t feel as confident that they will hold the bars securely as I do with a front loader stem!
I have to say although I only did a total of 6 sprints my legs were feeling heavy and sore by the time I got home. I’m not sure if that is tiredness from the weekend still or from the overload from the sprints.
While I was sprinting I noticed that there is a lot of movement in my clips when I pedal which is not ideal and on one of the sprints my right foot almost unclipped! I have decided to get some HT Pedals again so that I do not run the risk of unclipping a race.
This evening I had coaching at the track from 18:30 – 20:30 so I got to the track for 18:00 and got used to the bike a bit. I hated the higher bigger seat so swapped the Box One Seat back onto the bike and it felt way better! I did however love the Renthal bars and the S&M Redneck Stem as they made the bike handle and feel way better and also made manuals way easier too 🙂
The coaching session was a really good one too as we worked on building and carrying more speed on the track which worked really well too so a super successful day all around!
I am now eating some overnight oats and then jumping in the shower before bed so that I can get up at 5:00 to get ready and go to the gym for 5:30 in the morning for my first legs session in years :-).