Sunday 22nd June
Weight = 105.1 kgs
Steps = 4444 Steps
This morning I woke up at 5 am again with my alarm and got up and did my weigh-in and I was down 0.4 kgs to 105.1 kgs this morning. I then got dressed an packed the bike into the car and headed to Patchway again.
I got to the track at just after 6 am and then rode until just after 7:30 when I decided that I had had enough, I Started off doing second to last and last straights and unlocked a few new manuals on the last straight which make it way faster and smoother. I then started doing 1st and 2nd straights and unlocked the manual on the 1st on 2nd straight so that I have the option of keeping on the inside of the berm and doing the manual OR pedaling over the first jump out wide which was my preferred line until today 🙂 I then got changed and did a litter pick as a cool down and then headed home!
When I got home I ran a bath and stayed in it for about an hour so get rid if the aches and pains and then cool down a bit too 🙂
For the rest of the day I lounged in bed watching TV and messing on the phone! At about 5 pm I decided to swap the HT pedals from my Grey Curtis onto the Black Curtis as I am going to ride the Black Curtis for training and break down the grey one, clean it and build it back up ready to race at the club race on Wednesday night to see if I can actually do a full speed full lap or not! I also pumped up the tyres on the black one so it is ready to go in the morning for sprints!
I am off on Wednesday so I will head to Patchway first thing for a play instead of doing sprints and then head over again in the afternoon to race as well!
Monday 23rd June 2025 – 26 DAYS TO BRISTOL REGIONAL
Weight = 104.8 kgs
Steps = 10662 Steps
So this morning I woke up at 5 am with my alarm, got up and did my weigh-in (Down 0.3 kgs to 104.8 kgs this morning!) I then got dressed and went to the track to do sprints! This first dumb thing I did was forget my sprint stool and didn’t remember until I basically got to the track so I had to ride all the way back to the car again to get my sprint stool and then ride all the way back to the track to start my sprints. I then got my 6 x 25 m alternating sprints out of the way and had a 5 minute rest and was about to start my 50 m sprints but the wheel wouldn’t go round as the tyre was stuck on the frame! When I looked closer the tyre had come off of the rim and was bulging as you can see from the photo below:
Annoyingly I had left my pump at home as I didn’t think that I would need it as I had pumped my tyres up last night! Rookie mistake! So I let the tyre down and disengaged the brake so that the wheel would spin and I then walked the bike back to the car. To be honest the tyre looks pretty messed up anyway so having the pump probably wouldn’t have helped much anyway! I am now planning to fix the tyre this morning and then head up to the track and get my 50 m sprints done at lunchtime and probably have a bit of a play on the track afterwards too.
So I removed the tyre and found that the lip that holds the tyre onto the rim had ripped off so it was lucky that it went when it did as it could have been bad if it went when I was riding the track! I have now replaced the tyre with a new PowerBlock 24 x 1.75 tyre and a tubolito as well to make it lighter!
I am thinking about trying the S&M Kevlar folding tyres or the Box Folding tyres instead of PowerBlock to see if they are any better as the PowerBlock were good because they were cheap but they aren’t cheap any more so I may as well try the lighter folding tyres instead to reduce the spinning mass of the wheels!
I have just found a new S&M TrackMark 24 x 1.75 tyre on ebay so I have bought it to try out on the black Curtis to see how it rides then I will look at getting some new ones later on once i have finished testing it. The TrackMark will make the roll out a bit higher at 54.62 compared to the 54.35 on the 24 x 1.60 PowerBlock BUT the tyre is way lighter and has a max pressure of 110 psi compared to the 65 max psi of the PowerBlock so no more running tyre pressures almost 40% over the max allowed tyre pressure! S&M also make a 24 x 2.10 TrackMark too so I may get one of them when i get some cash to try running a 24 x 2.10 on the front and a 24 x 1.75 on the back and see how that rides. I may just go back to 24 x 1.74 on both wheels again like I used to to keep it simple! The only issue is I may need to get a new chain on the black Curtis as I think that the wheel may be too slammed at the moment to fit a 24 x 1.75 tyre on there 🙂
So I have just put the 24 x 1.75 PowerBlock on the Black Curtis to replace the split 24 x 1.60 tyre that broke this morning and the tyre fits perfectly without needing the chain replacing. The only thing that I had to do was raise the seat a bit as the tyre rubbed on the seat it the position that it was in before.
I kind of like the beefier tyre look as well so I will see how it feels on the track!
So I took lunch at 13:00 and headed to the track and got my 6 x 50 m alternate leg sprints with 3 minutes rest in between done and then I did 10 x full speed 1st straights to test out the Curtis with the bigger tyre on the back and it is deffo much faster and seems to manual way better with the bigger tyre on the back! I will be able to tell more when I go to Patchway with it on Wednesday morning first thing as I don’t ride there a much as I do at Bath so I can tell the difference better there. At Bath my muscle memory is so finely tuned that I don’t really notice anything there any more!
I have 26 days left until the Bristol Regional so I need to knuckle down and start eating properly and training better too. I need to start walking more as I haven’t done a 10000 step day for a really long time now so I need to get back to walking asap to try and sort my back out, prevent re-injury and also try and drop some weight as well!
I am currently on 3578 steps for the day so a long way from my 10000 step goal for today! I will try and go for a walk when the on call settles down a bit about 18:00! I am also going to do 10 minutes backwards walking to sort out my knees now the backwards treadmill is behind my desk ready to go and also do some wrist roller as my wrists are hurting after all the riding I did at the weekend!
This afternoon I have done 10 minutes of backwards walking and I am currently walking on the treadmill while I work to get to at least 10000 steps by the end of my shift! I have also done my wrist roller and cleaned the kitchen and treated myself to a really nice Aberdeen Angus Ribeye steak for tea too 🙂 So all in all today has been a pretty good day really.
Tuesday 24th June 2025 – 25 days to Bristol Regional
Weight = 105.6 kgs
Steps = 11241 Steps
So this morning I woke up with my alarm at 5 am but I was tired and hurting so I did my weigh-in (Up to 105.6 kgs this morning 🙁 ) and then went back to bed until 6 am when I got up, did a bit of work and then had a shower and got dressed and then walked into the office, did some work and then headed home again! By the time I got home I was on 8019 steps so well on the way to 10k steps already 🙂
I have decided that I will take a rest day today and get on with clearing out my flat instead. As I am off work tomorrow I will go to Patchway first thing and then Race at Patchway in the evening.
By the end of the day I was on 11241 steps which was well over the 10000 steps but just below the 12000 I was planning to do but I was really sore so decided to not push too much and try and be ready for tomorrow’s training.
Wednesday 25th June 2025 – 24 days to Bristol Regional
Weight = 105.8 kgs
Steps = 9947 Steps
So I woke up at 5 am and did my weigh in and I was up another 0.2 kgs to 105.8 kgs which is a bit annoying as I am getting heavier not lighter! I then showered and got dressed and headed to Patchway where I did an hour of first and second straights and had a couple where I manualled every jump cleanly and was super smooth then I lost it again and was casing every jump and looking like I had never ridden a bike before! After the hour I called it a day and went to my parents house and hoovered and mopped the Kitchen/Dining room and the toilet floors and then I got a message to say that my S&M TrackMark Tyre had been delivered so I headed home to get it!
When I got home I mowed the lawn as it was super overgrown As I hadn’t mowed it for probably 6 months at this point so I figured it was time as I had nothing to do until later in the afternoon.
While moving the lawn I decided that I was going to got to gates at Andover not race at Bristol in the evening so once I was done and had brushed up a bit I chilled until 15:50 then showered and packed the Black Curtis into the headed to my friend’s house to get a lift to Andover. As I left my driveway the petrol light came on and I literally had about £15 in coins in my car so I played petrol roulette until I got to a petrol station about 10 miles from home that wasn’t rammed with people queuing to fill up. I put in £12 so I had £3 left to do gates tomorrow. It was enough petrol to keep the light off so all good!
Gates went OK I was pretty consistently in the 2.5xx range and on the 15th gate I again managed to get a 2.496 gate which tied my pb this year which was the same gate that I got the pb in the first place which is odd!
This goes to show that I am getting fitter and faster as the Black Curtis doesn’t have Onyx hubs so is slightly slower than the Race Curtis but not by much. I think if I had taken the race Curtis I would have got a new pb tonight but there you go!
I got a lot of good manuals on the last jump on the first straight and started to get used to jumping on the tabletop as well so all in all the session was pretty good!
I have decided that I need to start doing a more structured gates session and I will start doing this from tomorrow at Bath. I will start with a few activation sprints off of the track I will then do a couple of warm up gates and then got into 1 gate to the first jump followed by a gate and max effort to the holeshot line and then add a straight each time until I do a full lap. I will rest 3-5 minutes in between efforts. I will then rest 5 minutes and then repeat again and then call it a day!
This will mean that I get in 10 max effort sprints and 2 full laps in the session.
Once I have done this I will call it a day after doing a couple of gates to pump lap to cool down.
By the end of the day I was on just under 10000 steps for the day (9947 Steps) which is close enough!
Thursday 26th June 2025 – 23 Days until Bristol Regional
Weight = 104.9 kgs
Steps = Steps
As I got home late last night I slept in until 6 am this morning then got up and did my weigh-in and I was down to 104.9 kgs this morning which is a solid 0.9 kgs weight loss for the day which is really good. I was super sore from yesterdays training so I will chill this morning and then go for a walk at lunchtime to try and walk off the soreness ready for gates this evening.
Before work I swapped out the back tyre on my training bike for the 24 x 1.75 S&M Trackmark tyre that arrived yesterday:
The S&M Tyre is a lot lower profile than the PowerBlock of the same size although I only put in 40 psi as I was using the hand pump as it was early and I didn’t want to wake up the neighbors with the Worx pump as it is load 🙂 I am now deciding if I go with 2 x 24 x 1.75 TrackMarks or put a 2.1 on the front. I will ride the bike how it is for a bit and then see what I feel will work the best! At lunch time today I will pump up the rear wheel to 100 or 110 psi to see how it runs with close to max pressure!