This weekend and moist of this week I have been ill in bed with covid like symptoms of sore body (especially legs), extreme tiredness, sore throat and feeling hot and cold all the time!
Because of this it is only Monday and yesterday that I did any exercise at all which on Monday was riding the ebike to the track to meet a friend and riding a bit but basically only doing a handful of half hearted first straights as my legs were so sore and then yesterday I rode the ebike to the office and back in the morning and then got a lift to the track to meet the same friend again and rode a bit more with faster first straights again but I still only managed a handful of laps again! I also walked home from the track after getting a lift part way!
I have not been able to get up and walk at all for the past 5 days or so and it is now pitch black at 5am until about 6:30 so I will not take in any sun any more until next summer 🙁
I am thinking that I will start at the gym next pay day as walking in the dark is depressing so will not be as effective as waking in the sun for my mental health. I am thinking that I can walk to the gym, workout and walk home before work and then I can get my sun in at lunch time when I ride to the track instead and then in the evening after work I can walk again to get my steps in although it will also be mostly dark soon too but what can you do? I think that the gym will be much more beneficial than walking in the mornings so I will start that on the 15th September after I get paid.
Once I feel better I will start to begin a more organised training program at lunch times too so that I can start to progress skill and fitness wise as I am not getting any better at the moment as my training has not been very focussed at all. I am planning to also do sprints 2x a week so I will replace 2 of my track sessions with sprints. I am also going to start doing 10-15 minutes of carpark skills before each track/ sprints session to warm up and also improve my bike skills (bunny hops, manuals and pedal manuals) as this will really help to progress my on track skills as well as provide a good warm up too.
I am going to take the rest of this week off from riding as I am still feeling like crap although I am signed up for the last summer club race so I may still race that on Friday if I feel up to it.
I did my weigh in this morning and I am back up to 107.6 kgs which is not surprising due to the amount of McDonalds breakfasts and lying around that I have been doing this past week or so.
Starting today I am eating properly again and from next week I will start walking every morning again until I start at the gym again on the 15th to try and get my weight moving downwards again every week instead of the current trend of going up every week 🙁
From the 15th I plan to work at being consistent in the gym and on my lunch workouts then I will see how much walking I need to do to keep my weight in check going forwards. I think I will stick to my planned 12500 steps a day goal as well to keep my weight dropping as so far this year I have only dropped 0.3 kgs from the start of the year 🤦♂️
I think with a bit of effort and some consistency I will be able to drop at least 10kgs by the end of the year which will really help with my health as well as my track speed when racing.
At the moment I haven’t lost much weight but my body composition has shifted a lot and my fitness has greatly improved from the start of the year so with some directed and focused training I think I should be in good shape to start really focussed training early next year.
Racing wise I still haven’t decided if next year, I will take another year off from Nationals and concentrate on Regionals and the Brits and double biking or if I will go back to racing Nationals again. I am thinking that it makes more sense to take it slow and double bike at Regionals to improve my race fitness and use the Brits at the end of the season to see if I am ready to race Nationals again next year or not. Then go from there. I really don’t have the money to race Nationals and Regionals next year so just racing Regionals kind of makes sense from a financial point of view too.
I am now going to ride flats for the winter to work on my pedalling more and allow for working on my jumping and manuals and flat skills more easily.