So I went and raced the SW champs today and it was wet to say the least! I made the A final but didn’t ride very well and deffo didn’t pedal to the first jump all day ☹️
On a positive note I did do 4 full laps all be it lack luster for the 2nd half of the track but I am making gains and I finished 2nd in my age group so not all bad but I lost out on the SW1 again🤦♂️
I have decided that I will go back to a 37×16 gearing on the Curtis for the winter to try and build up some leg strength and work on getting my top gear back as it was severely missing today!
I have just got home and cleaned the bike as it was filthy and it is now drying in the kitchen ready to store away in my bedroom later.
I am just trying to work out what gearing I will need to use on the OS20 to get the same rollout as a 37×16 on the Cruiser so that both bikes are the same.
So a 37×16 on my Curtis with a Tioga Powerblock 24×1.60 has a roll out of 54.35
So on the OS20 with a Tioga OS20 1.85 tyre a gearing of 43×17 has a roll out of 54.36 so basically an identical gearing 🙂
I think riding a higher gearing over the winter will definitely help my leg strength and hopefully get my higher gear back into my legs! I also need to do more sprints to get my leg cadence back up which means downhill sprints more than anything else for now! As well as start weight training as well to get my legs stronger to push the higher gearing. That being said, I think that I need to focus more on fitness and weight loss from now until xmas then in the new year I can focus more on Sprinting work once I have dropped weight and have more fitness than I do now.
To work in my fitness I am thinking of doing roller hit sessions on the GT in the evenings a couple of nights a week when I am not doing weights to gain fitness as well as kick off the weight loss over the winter! Weight wise I am planning on doing high volume body weight exercises 2x a week again to kickstart weight loss and muscular endurance then as I lose weight I plan to start using a weight vest to slowly increase the load then by xmas I think my body will be ready for weight training too. I will also swap my track sessions to be skills based sessions for now as I do not need to work on full laps at the moment although I will still work on pump laps each day as a warmup before the skills session. For the time being I will concentrate on the 3rd and 4th straights as they can build up my skills the fastest. I will also stay on flat pedals on the OS20 and clips on the Curtis but I plan to only use the Curtis on the weekends for gates and ride the OS20 the rest of the time.
For the Hitt training I plan to start with a 5 minute warm up followed by 10 x 10 second all out efforts followed by 3 minutes recovery in between efforts followed by a 5 minute cool down and then do some stretching to work on my flexibility.
For the Weight Training I plan on doing
We found out yesterday that next week is the last week of evening training at the track so once training moves back to weekends I will start doing my new training program in the evenings:
Mon and Thurs = Body weight training (Squats, calf raises, Bulgarian split squats, Press ups all 3 sets of 100)
Tues and Friday = Hitt roller training. (10 x 10 seconds to start increasing by 10 seconds every month until get to 60 seconds)