At some point I guess it'll be time to start updating again - after results I just wasn't happy with throughout the Nationals series I felt better saying nothing than anything negative, so decided to leave any updates until the new season.

Since March I've taken time off the bike and now started working back in to things, but the time out of the saddle certainly has killed my fitness off - and though I'm now putting in plenty of hours at nice easy intensities, nothing is really being done at the high end currently. Helpful if I decide to ride from Melbourne to Canberra, not so useful if I want to do anything longer than a flying 200m.

Last months total riding amounted to 35 hours in the saddle, only 810km; this month, with still 9 days to go, I'm at 37 hours and 910km, and it's all marked 'Prep'. July 6th marks the start of my Base 1 block, with only really base training before the first major race - somewhat necessary as I have goals in September, October and January - a bit too spread out to be ideal. For those wondering, the three big events for me will be the 2009 Australian Marathon Championships, the SurfCoast 6 hour, and the Australian Mountain Bike Championships, with everything else being just icing on the cake.

Shortly you'll see a little report of what we came across yesterday later on, but todays hit out was the first of any real intensity for a while, not helped by the 270km I'd already done throughout the week and not recovered from. Rather than riding the Rock Hop, I decided to ride 45km to Casey Fields, race the crit, then ride to the Rock Hop to finish the day taking photos. Nothing worth really reporting other than that I'm now rather tired ;D

Anyhow - I'll be trying to get back into a more normal rythym, however more frequent smaller updates will come via twitter.com/tjsr

More soon.

Well that was different, and fun. As another rider put it, the whole event was a complete gigglefest.

With a still-sprained wrist from Thursday night expected to make every impact painful, I rocked up thinking I could enter B grade, but getting bumped into A. I wasn't really bothered since really everyone rides the same grade anyway, and was fully expecting to get re-graded into A by the time I'm back in form around August. But that meant me starting off with the fast guys, so I started off by ensuring I was at the back of the A-graders.

A nice pace was set early on, but 7 weeks of no strengh or intensity made it pretty clear I wasn't going to be catching anyone through the flats of Kurrajong. It wasn't helped by my cassette skipping every time I put power down out of the corners. Slowly I went backwards through the field, just trying my best to not hold too many riders up, and using it to work on my new riding style and general technique - not trying to pin every corner certainly paid off.

By about the 20-30 minute mark it was pretty clear the guys I was riding with had already been pushing themselves pretty hard, so there was a lot of me just standing fully upright and coasting - I was in no hurry to pass them back either. Unfortunately it was about then that my first problem hit - a broken chain just before a section where everyone was dismounting to ride up. Out with the chain breaker, snap off the dodgy link, in with a powerlink and off I was again in about 6 minutes.



Once I got going I decided I'd ride up what everyone else was walking - the plan came undone a bit though when I put a wheel wrong, and where I tried to put a foot simply wasn't there, getting tangled in the bike. After getting going again, at the top I stopped to help a rider who's brakes were rubbing - turned out his rear caliper was loose. Off again riding slowly as a pair, entering the next boardwalk I'd produce a hatrick of offs - I was right on the edge from the start, and eventually my rear wheel dropped itself off the edge.

It was all pretty uneventful from there though - rode together, picked up another roadie at the top of Cressey so gave a tow to those two riders, and then dropped them down the horribly rutted Lactic. After that it was around the quarry and up Cressey (where we kinda took a wrong turn) - I thought I'd TT it up the climb. About a minute in I realised I didn't have it in me, sitting at 184bpm and not having even passed the boulder at the 1 minute mark. Clearly fitness still has some way to go.

At top top I sat waiting for the half dozen riders I'd passed at various points, intending to give them a tow back. Unfortunately once we did get onto the fire trail with me in TT mode, the last rider was so stuffed he couldn't even hold 35km with a tow, so we didn't pick up any kind of bunch. I'd take off a bit through the singletrack each time just to work on technique, and then stop at the exit for him to join up again.



For a bit of fun I thought it might be neat to stage a photo-finish - the two of us riding as close to side-by-side as possible across the line. Will the finish times reflect it? :) For anyone interested, I've uploaded a copy of my GPS data to Garmin Connect at http://connect.garmin.com/activity/4562762

Anyway, I think that straight away about blows my GMBC winter series, but it was certainly fun to get out.

Getting back into riding and racing the last few days has also provided a decent chance to test out new toys. But these toys need decent software to be of any use, so currently I'm testing out Ascend (for Mac).

Thursday was a quick hit out at Westgate, though that ended up being a little bit quicker than it probably should have been - with the hardtail not having been ridden since the You Yangs sludgefest, it turns out that despite the fact I'd replaced the chain, cassette and bottom bracket, the brakes had completely had it, making trying to wipe off speed before corners next to impossible, and controling speed through corners unpredictable. Add to that a slow leak which had deflated the front tyre sufficiently by the start of the second race, I opted to pull the pin very early. But at least I got a copy of the course layout :D


Saturday was time to wake up early, though only another dozen people had the same idea. With a very small crowd the track was run in reverse direction - something I've been very vocal about taking issue to due to the safety (or lack of) of having a barbed wire fence running 50cm from a bumpy descent where speeds of 50km/h are reached.
Due to the low density though we didn't have to fly downhill as fast as possible, and the furrows on the climb became excruciatingly painful after about lap four. Adam was opening up about 100-150m per lap on me, and about half that gap was also being opened up behind me to the next rider, so for 40 minute plus a lap I spent time-trialling at 180+/-3bpm.




Unfortunately I didn't realise that doing a hard effort the day after a crit, having done a crit the day before, would wear me out a bit quicker than the 4 hours I'd intended to be out for. 8am was too early given it was only around 11 degrees, so by 9 I was on the road sans arm warmers.
The last few times out at Lysterfield I've been trying to work on the M2006 course - last week it was done on the Anthem, this week on the hardtail, which proved much harder to ride on the final descent. But overall the laps were quicker by about a minute (probably mostly the bike) - the aim over the next few weeks will be to keep chopping seconds.


One thing's becoming clear is that we'll need to go back and do some more work on the re-constructed berms, as they're getting some holes dug into them already.

This coming week is supposed to be a rest week, so I'll have to see how I organise that, in order to be in the best fitness I can manage before Mt Buller in a fortnight. No National Championships at Stromlo for me, unfortunately.

So after a long slumber, I've come back from a ride through the hills around Belgrave, Kallista, Emerald etc. While I'm back home in one piece despite the wet roads and Schwalbe Stelvio tyres that don't really like wet weather, I didn't actually end up going where I thought I was going.

Below is where I planned to go.


View Larger Map

Unfortunately my brilliant powers of winging it meant I actually ended up on a route looking more like this:

View Larger Map
To top it off, I discovered that Belgrave-Kallista road is unsealed road, which left a rather long section to be ridden, on a roadie, on loose gravel roads - drifting it sideways any time an oncoming car wanted to pass :P

I'm using this as evidence that I need to hurry up and get myself that Garmin Edge 705.

Thismorning I was up at a reasonable hour in order to get some base training in as part of the recovery plan. In the crit at the You Yangs my legs basically died any time I tried to put out any power at all, so what was planned here would be interesting to see what happened.

The results were certainly positive in contrast to that crit - though it's clear my fitness has plummetted.

See if you can tell where I completely died in the ass. The graph below shows 10 second hill sprints every 150 seconds.

The main difference in how I did this and how I probably should have was that I was doing 85%MHR as a recovery effort - which should have been down around 70. Oops? :)

Once I got to the top I had to decide whether to tack on to the back of the HCC group that had waited up the top before heading for The Wall - I chose instead to head home, rather than beating myself into the ground again.

Beach Road tomorrow.

After the short hit out this morning I headed off to do some shopping. The intent was to go buy a Garmin Edge 705 to be paired with the Powertap I'll be buying next month, but prices made me put that off - I'll get one either through my sponsor or from another supplier, as it'll be ~$100 cheaper that way, and I can wait a few weeks.

But while in the store I spotted something I've been unable to find for 18 months - anyone who's ridden with me knows I've always been extremely happy with Fox Dirtpaw gloves, but have always used either plain black ones, or the '07 Navy/Black ones.

Well, I finally found a pair in my size of the hard-to-get White/green ones, which will be saved for dry races due to them being white:



Sweeeeet :)

Tomorrow I'll be once again sitting on the sidelines for a State Series round, as has been the plan for some time. In the last week I've had three trips to the doctor/hospital and a number of tests done, though I am starting to feel a bit better.

In general my heart rate is starting to come down to normal levels, though it's still going off the charts when I so much as lift an arm or stand up, so clearly I've still got a while to go before I can get back on the bike. The aim is to ensure my HR comes back down under 60 at all times before I consider getting back into any training - generally it's been in the mid 70s when sitting down to high 90s when standing up.

I may do a few short rides spinning slowly in about a week, to see how I feel, but most likely it'll involve no serious intensity at all. As a result of all this I'm completely looking again at how I train, and there'll be a new plan - if things improve on target, I'll et a single base cycle and a single build cycle in before Buller, each being around 3 weeks, then giving me another build cycle before Glenorchy.

Fingers crossed I start getting better though.

Some riding stats for 2008. These won't change much as I now need to stop riding to recover.

Total km covered: 10500km
Total hours riding: 517h
Total hours of competition XC: 120
Total hours of non-competition XC: 46
Total hours of road racing: 11
Number of solo 6 hour enduros: 9
Number of races (not crits): 30
Total number of XC crits: 59
Number of punctures: 8
Number of race wins: 3
Number of podiums: 9 (hopefully these two will stop anyone ever calling me a sandbagger :)
Number of DNFs: 8
Destroyed rear derailleurs: 1
Broken bones: 0 (yay!)