This morning I woke up at 5 as normal but my stomach was really bad (Probably because of the chicken nuggets and chips that I had for tea last night!) so I decided that sprints would be a bad idea as its a 15 minute drive from the sprint spot to my house so not the easiest to get home with a dodgy stomach without an accident happening! As I have to take my car to the garage on Friday morning the last thing I need to do is have it smelling of poop 🙂 I also tried the backwards treadmill and it is way too noisy still in the mornings when there is literally silence so I will have to fit that in during the day at some point! Probably just before lunch as a warm up for my lunch time training!
I did my weigh-in as normal (down 0.1 kgs to 103.0 kgs this morning) I got showered and dressed and drove into the office to do some bits and bobs and then drove home. While driving home and seeing how dark it is getting already I decided that sprints in the mornings is a bad idea and that I will go back to keeping my morning routine simple and the same every day so I will go back to walking as soon as I wake up for at least an hour to get my steps in and get my body moving gently first thing and get me ready for the day ahead!
So my daily training breakdown will be as follows:
I have changed my Track and Sprint days back to Monday, Wednesday and Friday for track sessions to fit in with my Friday lunch coaching session to get me jumping again. Also doing sprints Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday means that I don’t have to worry about being in the office and getting back before going to the track which is good!
In the PM I will start to go to different local tracks that have lights and are open to get more gate sessions in and start to get in the habit of doing proper gates training so I will start to do gates sessions with a purpose so 3 warm-up gates followed by gate to 1st jump rest then gate to end of 1st straight then gate to end of 2nd straight etc until the whole track is covered then rest 10 minutes and then do the same again then cool down and head home! This way I will work on gates AND get used to riding more than just the first jump of these tracks! As I am doing the deep south this year I will start switching Wednesday nights between Andover and Bristol to 1 mix it up and 2 get better at Andover track and try and build up to doing full speed laps there as I don’t remember a time when I have ever managed a full speed lap of the track! I think the best that I have achieved is 3 out of the 4 straights and my legs exploding out of the last berm 🙁 Both tracks are long and pedally so both are really good training tracks!
I am still debating doing one or both nights at Burnham as its a real slog to get to from here but the track is fun and I always enjoy riding there when I get there. Burnham also has a lot more jumps so its good for me to get comfortable with jumping anyway 🙂
I may well add riding on the rollers on Monday, Friday and Saturday evenings to spin out the legs and learn how to ride rollers properly over the winter. It also means less time led in bed watching TV in the evenings so its a win-win! I will also fit in the knees over toes Knee ability zero program when I can on Monday, Wednesday and Friday!
The Deep south dates were released last night so I now have something to aim for over the winter now 🙂 My first goal is get ready for Knightwood on the 27th October so that gives me 53 days to get in shape and be able to do a full lap of a track 🙂
My main goal for this month is to train consistently starting tomorrow with getting up and walking first thing to try and get at least 8000 steps in before work then Backwards walking on the new treadmill for 10 minutes and then Sprints at the track at lunch time I don;t think I will go to Burnham tomorrow night as I have a feeling this week is going to be taken up by waiting in for deliveries but we will see!
I will focus mainly on getting up straight away every morning and walking for now and then build up the rest as I can but I will start properly Monday with sprints. I will most likely do my timing session on Monday too to make sure that I can measure my improvements over the winter. I don’t think that I will time every session as its a bit of a nightmare to set up and record all the times and that setup time could be used to do my car park skills warm up!
I am already thinking that I am going to change Sunday mornings and get up and walk like I do every other morning and then when i get back from my walk I can get my son up and do my backwards walk while he gets up and gets ready then we can go to a track as soon as he is ready as he always takes longer than 10 minutes to get out of bed let alone get ready! I think that I may give the evening track visits a miss until the end of this month to give me enough time to get into the habit of doing the morning and lunch time sessions and also give my body time to adjust to the increased training load! I can also take this month to get comfortable riding on the rollers in the evening!
I am still shocked at how much better my legs are feeling after just 10 minutes of backwards walking on the treadmill yesterday I knew it was going to help but I didn’t know it would help so quickly 🙂 So far the treadmill has been the best £400 I have spent ever 🙂 I can’t wait to see how my knees are after the 12 weeks on the Knees over Toes Zero program too 🙂
I am just going through all the bikes that I have and its too many! I really need to figure something out with the DK the GT, DMR jump bike and the Black Market as none of them are being used at the moment and they are in the way! I urgently need to get the shed cleared out so that I can get a couple of bikes in it and out of the flat! I also need to organise the garage but I am waiting for the new containers at the track so that I can get rid of the 5 old club bikes in there at the moment. I’m also going to get rid of all the old boxes and also all the stuff that is in there as I haven’t used any of it in the past 3 years so I realistically don’t need it 🙂
I also have a bunch of furniture to get rid of as well and an aquarium and stand too then I will have a lot more space! I also need to get the motorbike running and then get it serviced, mot’ed and sold to free up some cash and also free up space in the garage for my gym and also a decent bike storage area too! to be honest if I go thorough and get rid of all the old crap I should have enough room to do all that anyway so I may just start doing an hour a night in there until its sorted! Its boring but it needs to be done and will be worth it in the long run! I think that I will make a start on the shed tonight then I can at least get one or 2 of the bikes in there out of the way! Or maybe the aquarium and stand and the cupboard as that would help too.
It is looking like I will not be able to go to the track again at lunch time as I have deliveries coming so I will have to play it by ear but I am hoping that I can get out into the shed after about 17:30-18:00 and make a start on organising my life! Lets see what happens 🙂
So as expected the deliveries will all be around lunch time so its not looking like I am getting to the track today again 🙁
So the forks and chain tensioner that were supposed to be here yesterday have jsut arrived and I have installed the forks on the bike as a mock up. I am waiting for a 1.5″ headset too to arrive so I can knock the headset race onto the fork properly and also for a bigger stem as the one on there is only a 45mm stem and is made for little people and I am not little 🙂 I have ordered a blue 53mm Crupi I-Beam stem from Crucial as they didn’t have any black ones in stock so I used the small one to see how it looks and its OK. I would have prefered a black stem but there we go! The forks and bars look pretty good on there too!
The hubs for the bike arrived today too so I am going to give them to my friend along with the rims at the weekend to get them built up. I ordered tyres and tubes last night too so once they arrive and the wheels are built I have everything to build up the bike 🙂
I am now starting to get excited about the build and can’t wait to ride it 🙂
I also fitted the black chain tensioner on the Standard 24″ and it looks much better now 🙂
Just waiting for the DRX’s to arrive now and then I’m ready to go 🙂 I have checked the site that I bought them from and they are still in picking so it doesn’t look like they will be here for the weekend that’s for sure 🙁
This evening I went to the track and met up with some friends and had a ride which was good to blow the cobwebs off and get some extra exercise in 🙂 I’m getting used to the Standard but really need to get the 180 mm cranks swapped to 175 mm cranks asap. On that I am going to swap the 180 mm cranks with my 175 mm Forward cranks that I lent to a friend ages ago so but Friday latest I will have a set of 175 mm cranks so I can start sprinting properly.
I have decided to sell my 180 mm DXR’s to get rid of them and get some of the money back that I spent on the new ones 🙂
When I got back from the track I got the last 3000 steps in on the treadmill then had a Radox bath and went to bed by 21:30.
I finished the day on 10215 steps.