2020

Allot has happened in the month since my last blog and the main focus of next season has been decided.

The events of the last month

• I was asked by Nopinz Symec Development Team if I would like to ride for them having sent them my CV earlier in the year. This was a huge relief to get on a team for 2020 and means I can fully focus on training and getting ready for next season.
• Shortly after the first blog was published, I had an appointment with a physio. After doing allot of tests on all the muscles in my legs he decided that my injury had healed sufficiently enough for me to begin training again. This was great news. A few days after my physio appointment I had an MRI scan on my right hip area. The results of which I have not found out yet, but I haven’t had any pain in that area, so I am feeling confident that I have recovered from the injury.
• I raced the 3^rd cat race at the Hillingdon Big events and won.

The plan for the winter.

In 2020 my races are going to change dramatically. As an under 16 my races were at most an hour and a half. However, as a junior the racing is going to be around 3 hours on average. They are also going to be on the roads rather than on specific circuits. Due to the racing being on the roads the races have the potential to be much hillier than youth races. I am sure it will be challenging but I am really looking forward to the longer races and the hills. To be ready for this I am increasing the volume of training that I am doing in a week. The biggest change is going from 2 rest days in the week to 1. The 1 rest day in the week is not a total rest day at that is when I go to the gym which is only possible thanks to GLL sports foundation.

The gym is an important part of my recovery from my injury as I have lost allot of sprint power. As I gain strength, I am planning on increasing my gym volume to further improve my sprint power. With how things are going the volume increase will happen next week. The other way I am training to improve my sprint is by doing rev-outs on the rollers. This won’t make big gains in muscle power, but it will improve the neuromuscular pathways required to pedal. There are 12 muscles required to contract at different points on the pedal stroke. By doing rev outs you are forcing the brain to rapidly contract the muscles in the correct. The faster your brain can contract the muscles in the correct order the faster the rev out will be. The rev outs teach your brain how to pedal in the most extreme way possible. So how does this help sprinting? It helps sprinting by making the pedal stroke more efficient thus unlocking extra power. The efficiency gains come from the muscles contracting in the correct order and not contracting against each other but with each other. This unlocks more power and greater rates of acceleration in the sprint. Doing rev outs also provides boosted efficiency across all cadences. This is why they are a staple training session and appear every week in my training plan.

To be ready for the longer and potentially more hilly races, I will be doing longer rides. I am planning on getting to the point in the next 6-8 weeks where doing 3.5-hour rides on Saturday and 4+ hours on Sunday is routine. Plan is that specific efforts in these rides will be introduced in around 10 weeks’ time. A couple months of this will hopefully put me in a great position to be competitive in the road races. All this builds towards being selected to ride in national road races as well as getting to race in Belgium with central region. Bigger plan is to get selected to ride for GB at the 2021 worlds in Flanders.

I will also be targeting the track nationals in particular the IP and scratch race. This is to try and get back on to GB Junior Academy. To achieve this, I will be racing the Monday night track league at reading as well as efforts to improve sprint power, anaerobic power as well as max aerobic power and rate of recovery.

So that’s the main focus of next season; get to ride in a GB jersey again.