Sorry I forgot to take pictures, I was too busy having fun. I met some folk at Elton Furze for a bank holiday ride. We decided to go west for a change, which is a bit lumpier and my favourite area. We were quite sedate for the first 9 miles (circa 15mph) when one of my mates decided his knee wasn’t up to lumpy stuff, we were about to cross into. He missed a great ride. We stopped in a different pub for a change (the Tap and Kitchen in Oundle) and had a pint and lunch. Delightfully just as we were pulling in we passed a mate and his wife that I see often but always on the other side of a busy road so I’ve not actually spoke to them for ages and they had a cafe stop in the pub 
Its not often I raise my VO2max on a group ride but I had long steady pulls on the front 
Majoreic: “Hmm, I’ve got less than 4.5hrs to get in a ride. No problem, I’ll roll an IM bike leg with time to shower.”
Well done.
after a week of easy riding, I’ve got 2 weeks of hard work left, then taper for Silver State 508. 25 days until race day!
Set a 5 minute power PR(355w) on today’s VO2 workout. 6x5min @ 118%.
I couldn’t stop sneezing when I woke up and I was a bit bunged up (although sinuses seemed clear). So I wasn’t expecting much on tonight’s 3 up. But weirdly the temperature which was 5-8deg C cooler than last week was perfect for clearing everything and tonight’s 3up felt moderate at most. It helped with it only being the circa 1h long route and no numb hands
I ended up recording the fastest time on the route; not that there’s many other than us do the route.
Still feeling fresh I had a go at a new segment before the road gets developed. The wind wasn’t ideal a 13mph North-westerly (a south westerly would be best I think) . I managed to get 9th on that despite breaking a bit too early for the traffic lights at the end, they stayed green a lot longer than I thought.
As seems to be the norm on group rides where I’m not continuously pulling my VO2 max according to garmin goes down by a few points.
dropped the front end on the TT bike 10mm and took it for a century to see how I would tolerate it. after 4 hours fatigue started to start in on the neck. Saddle needs to come up a hair to open the hips up a touch. Did result in my fastest century to date though(non-wind assisted) at 21.6 mph on 200w avg! Forward visibility was slightly impacted, which likely resulted in the neck fatigue, but not terrible.
your long rides are reminding me of my young 25 year old friend doing epic shit, yesterday he did this:
ok the 100F started closer to 3pm, but still… it was hot by noon. Savage. Oh to be 25 again…
And his epic-ness continued… After 7.5 hours, in the heat of the afternoon, he did Tuesday worlds and averaged 27.2mph and took 2nd. He was on his Trek Madone and averaged 240W (270NP) for the entire ride! After Tue worlds, he rode home for 20minutes at 21mph (about 230W) and it was still 90F.
I’m not worthy!!!
Meanwhile back in MY reality of ‘rebooting a new season’ this week is coming along a lot better than last week…
and headed out the door for an easy Wed worlds. One step at a time. At least my thumb is better now
I had Centennial -2 (1h 15) in my calendar today but I chose to use Alternates to get a 1h workout. I always tend to end up going too far on a workout and adding circa another 30mins. 30mins on top of an hour is more passable when I’m WfH. Alternates suggested Centennial -4
I actually meant to be closer to the hour this time but I had drivers on my butt down the old A1 so I waited for it to clear before doing a u turn. It was more tempo than threshold though. There was a lot more in the lungs and perhaps a bit more in the legs but I never had the mojo to push them 
It wasn’t helped by the 130+ lap button. It seems to to press really easy off the bike with both hands and with the right hand on the bike but not the left for some reason. For some mental reason on the TT bike I prefer not to take my right hand of the brake or gears; and had to stop and unclip before pressing buttons at the start of intervals. I prefer workouts don’t have the press lap to continue. Lol, the one time I thought after 3 or 4 pushes with the left that I’d triggered the lap button it was actually the Varia which was triggered. On hindsight I should have took time to recreate the workout in TP or done it on my 1030.
Edit: And in keeping with doing a more sustained effort albeit not a strong one my Garmin predicted VO2max goes up again 
Its about as accurate as licking your finger and sticking it up in the air to gauge air speed 
Taken as a whole, the studies suggest that the Garmin methodology can give you a VO2 max estimate within about 5 percent of your true value.
8% average mean error: https://assets.firstbeat.com/firstbeat/uploads/2017/06/white_paper_VO2max_30.6.2017.pdf (FirstBeat, the algorithm that Garmin uses)
So if you see 60, it can be everything from 55 to 65.
Which is a HUGE difference.
Just saying that it’s a metric that is I feel that every single Garmin user posts as some kind compass in their training, yet it has huge error margins and is just this arbitrary number. I personally just feels that it does more harm than good when one starts looking and trusting these things.
I’m extremely skeptical of it; the highest random number it gave me was 75 right in the middle of lockdown, whilst I was fitter I wasn’t 15 units fitter (just practically every ride was alone and sustained) and the only time it dropped below 50 briefly and before rising again to 60 was when I was dying of cancer (IMO it should have been sub 10 then like my blood iron). The emoji was supposed to indicate my skeptism, I certainly don’t treat it as a compass in my training 
Trying to make the most of a day before schools start back in England. Very happy to got that average over a quite lumpy route. The middle section was going down Ide Hill and trying to get up Yorks Hill. Yorks was too steep/slippery. I can normally get up steep hills but as I got up out of 5e saddle the back wheel started spinning, and when I sat down it felt like I wasn’t far off pulling a wheelie. I just need more practice at finding the weight balance.
View from top of Ide Hill over Bough Beech reservoir.
130 miles on the roadie today, Probably the last ‘long’ ride before Silver State. Started to come apart a bit the last few miles. Managed only 14 minutes of off the bike time. I’d call that good for a self supported 200k!
It was a rail strike today so I ended up WfH which gave me enough time to pop out and do an opener for this weekends race. Cajon
I think it went quite well as I’m finally psychologically comfortable after a near miss a few years ago (a driver was taking the racing line through a ‘Z’ bend and was on the wrong side of the road and I pulled off the grip as I turned hard out of the way. Getting psychologically confident wasn’t helped with my constantly changing nerve damage. Ive been physically comfortable always). I did mean to turn earlier but I was comfortably in the zone for the 8 minute interval so I put of stopping for a u’turn or turning down the hill until my cooldown.
You might be able to see I was pleased on my traditional post ride selfie
closing out August in the green
finally getting my new season on track!
And saying goodbye to August means our garage calendar is leaving lovely Lauterbrunnen:
for
Locarno
I’ll see that Swiss castle and raise it with our local Preston Castle
that I rode by last weekend!
Happy September 1st!!!
No pics to spam you with yet! But I managed a 10mile PB by 19s on the F2A down at Cambourne (22.14). I think I could do better still as every time I’ve done the course except my 25mile PB its been a tailwind out to the turn (4.5miles) and headwind back 5.5miles). No power pb’s though (9w down on my only previous go on the 10mile route), just I was more aero.
The Tri Velo podcast said push harder when you are slowest, so I attacked the small bumps on the course and it worked 
Muggy then rainy ride in Carlsbad, California- at least it was warm out and made it back safe so no complaints. Sorry I missed @jonnyknight - I saw that you were there after the fact on strava - I was on the orange Orbea with the Rouleur kit…
Not many photo ops while it’s raining out, had to keep hands on the bars and rubber on the ground.
4x16 minutes@104%. Surprised myself on this one, didn’t get a great night’s sleep and wasn’t expecting this to go well after a more than usual stress level on the recovery day prior.
Ended up doing the first 3 at 105%, and decided to see if I could hold 320 for the last interval, managed 323w, setting new all time power pr’s from 10:30 through 16:30!
