Aborted Start

Well I suppose not a true aborted start as I have done one race, but certainly my target races have started off aborted due to our nice Spring weather. I was due to take part in the CTT TT Series Round 1 on the 24th March, held in Finchingfield in Essex, but the race had to be postponed due to snow and sub zero temperatures. I am not sure when the race will eventually be held, just hope it isn't on a weekend where I have another important race planned, though I can't say I blame the organiser for that, it wasn't him that caused the weather disruption.

Normally I would be slightly peeved with a postponed/cancelled event, but on this occasion I can't say it bothered me that much. It wasn't because I didn't feel good, in fact even after a tiring week away with work and training I felt pretty good, it was more the fact of racing with temperatures hardly reaching zero degrees, and with a wicked Easterly wind wasn't really what I wanted to do. Also I realised without the racing I didn't have to ease back on the training and I could continue to build fitness for my future even more important events - the BBAR races. This is quite a contrast to last year for me, for the first time I am really concentrating on getting as fit as possible in the available time, and racing less. Hopefully this will yield better results and faster times, mentally it is challenging when I enjoy racing, but the rewards could be bigger.

Training will continue until Round 2 which is in late April, and hopefully during the intervening weeks fitness will improve some more and I will go into this race even fitter, at least the weather should be better by this time, though to be honest the way things have go so far you never know.

Coming back to the weather, never had I trained so much using the turbo trainer in the garage over Winter and into Spring, normally the weather has got warmer by now and I would be doing most of my riding on the road. With the really low temperatures, and my hated for getting too cold means I have resorted to a lot of riding whilst going nowhere, not the most pleasant but by heck it is effective. It is also helping with getting my weight down as well, it will be good to start the racing in earnest some 4-5kgs less than I raced at last year.

Before the next TT Series event, I have a fun 10 miler on the V718 on the 6th April, which is the Team Swift event, not one I will be training for, or even tapering for. This will be the classic training race where I just continue to train normally, and see what happens on the day, hopefully the legs will be fine (and the weather) and I can set a half decent time. It is a long way to go for a 10 mile event, but I am collecting a wheel whilst up there so that is more the reason to do the race if I am honest. It will be good to see what sort of 20 min power I can put out at this stage of the season.