Wednesday 28 October 2020

Autumnal musings

 It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged or even looked at this. I think that’s indicative of how I’ve felt generally about swim, bike and run. Well, bike and run. Actually, barely biking of late. It’s not that I’ve lost my mojo, it’s just that it is firmly laying dormant. It is there within me, wanting to bust out and be used to good effect in a race or event, but I just can’t seem to force it to the surface to make me really want to do something athletic. 

Part of it has been to do with work-life balance. I need to caveat the next few sentences reflecting on the fact that I still have a full-time job and that I can pay my bills, which thousands of people are currently struggling with. For them, the foreseeable future must look pretty bleak and I can only sympathise and hope that we can get things back to some sort of normal as soon as possible. Work has had to take a priority for the last couple of months. I’m usually pretty good at knowing when to park work stuff and look after myself, but I need to spend more hours working at home, which means less time to hop on the bike, even if it does just mean a 20 second walk to the end of the garden to get on the turbo. 

The other reason for my dormant mojo has been a lack of racing. To be honest, there have been some events that I could have done but I just haven’t felt in the right frame of mind to do them. I dragged myself out to the Kingston Phoenix Open 10 TT, and pushed out  24:05. It was a really well organised event by my club, but without the usual bants over tea and cake, it seemed a bit hollow, despite the quick catch-up with club mates.

The last few weeks have been more about easy coffee rides with the odd hard effort up hill or on a strava segment. And gradually some desire to work hard has started to return. I’ve begun to focus a bit more on my TrainerRoad sessions, particularly, those horribly hard 90 minute over-under sets which almost leave me honking with effort. They are so hard, but by far the most effective sessions for me to improve my ftp and get back up to 300 watts. I need something to focus on over the winter months and that’s as good a thing as any. With us being in a Covid world for the foreseeable future, it looks like a TT  based focus for next year is likely. At the moment, I think I’d like to have another really good go at my 25 mile pb. Currently, it’s 55:39, so getting g a lot closer to 50 minutes would be rather cool. 

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