A Bit of Bible, Biodiversity and British Being: Rabbi Neil's Blog

I'M FLYING!!!

Introducing myself to the new bike was a bit of a comical disaster. I ended up lying in the middle of the road because I had unclipped the wrong foot before stopping. But now I've learned my lesson and I'm able to ride the road bike properly. I cannot believe the difference it has made. It's so light compared to my cross bike, which now feels ridiculously sluggish by comparison. Before looking at my times, here's something else really worth looking at, my training chart.

You can see that in weeks 9 and 10 I cycled virtually nothing because of the bad knee. I've slowly come back to it, although this morning was meant to be another 15 miles but I was too exhausted from a late night. Anyway, in the first 12 weeks I've cycled a total of 335 miles. One week (week 8) I cycled more than the schedule required of me. 

Week	Total Miles on Schedule	Actual Miles Cycled	Total Miles	Weight
1	30	2	2	194
2	40	20	22	194
3	50	25	47	192
4	30	10	57	194
5	55	30	87	194
6	70	55	142	190
7	80	60	202	190
8	50	55	257	189
9	85	2	259	187
10	95	0	259	185
11	105	26	305	187
12	75	30	335	187

Check out my weight. I was losing weight slowly and steadily although the drop in activity on the regime has resulted in stagnation. Nonetheless, I've already lost 7lbs. With four weeks to go, I should be able to get that into double figures. So, that's progress. I'm not cycling enough, but I am cycling nonetheless. With four weeks left, I should probably pass 600 miles of training in order to be fully prepared. That's going to take more commitment than I felt this morning!

Now, what about the speed?

5 mile times	10 mile times	15 mile times	20 mile times
29
26
27
27
25
21:33	43:44
22:14	45:12
23:06
21:21
21:00	43:44
22:36	43:35	1:07:30
23:45	46:03
23:44	47:00
23:13	45:49	1:10:18
			1:46:12
23:19	47:38
22:52	46:44
23:27	47:57
			1:36:28
22:39	45:43
24:15	47:01	1:11:07
			1:39:06
18:29
19:04
			1:19:31
18:37	37:19
18:44	37:16

Blue is previous personal best (PB), yellow is current. The 15 mile column is about to get filled much more as my thrice-weekly ride is going to shift from 10 to 15 miles. But you can clearly see in the other columns when I shifted from the old bike to the new bike. My 5 mile PB was slashed by two and a half minutes. My 10 mile PB was slashed by 6 minutes. And my 20 mile PB was slashed by 17 minutes. I feel like this when I'm on the bike now...

I've honestly never cycled this fast. I'm going so quickly now that I even registered a reading on a local speed detector (which said I was doing 17mph). Speed isn't everything on a 100-mile race, though. The reason I pay attention to this is because during the Tour of Acoma, road support is withdrawn after about 7 hours and I'd rather have as little of my race as possible without support. An hour or two I can handle, more than that might be an issue.

I do know, though, that endurance is key, and I really need to be working more on that. There have been a couple of 30-mile rides but with 4 weeks to go, I should have at least done one or maybe two 50-mile rides by now. This weekend has to be a minimum of 40 as a result, but I'll push for 50 if I can. The key question is the left knee, which isn't very painful any more but is still aggravating me and still needs ice. 

So, I still have a lot of work to do. I'm now comfortable on the new bike with the new shoes and new way of riding. I say comfortable - the new saddle really hurts my bum. I'm used to more padding. But apart from that, I'm comfortable that I'm not very likely to fall off and hurt myself, even though every bump I hit in the road makes me think about it for a second or two. 

What I need is to build up my endurance. And what I also need is your support. I know without question that the more people sponsor me per mile, the more I'll be pushed to keep going. So please, please, please if you haven't sponsored me already, please go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/655G575 to sponsor me. Thank you.