Main events of the last 4 weeks.
Pedal Potential are supporting me for 2020 so an absolutely massive thankyou to everyone there. 2020 is shaping up to be a great year !
Got my second cat licence, secured the overall win in the Oddown winter series and grew my sock collection.
Huge thanks to Lee and Sunwise for my Hastings sunglasses. I apsolutly love them !!
2nd cat
Having been racing at the Oddown winter series every week since it started in the middle of December, I have been working towards the 40pts needed to get my second cat licence.
3rd in round 1, winning round 2,3 and 4 with coming 4th in round 5 meant I had 43pts and a second cat licence was in the post from BC with my name on it.
I am really happy to have only spent 1 week more than the minimum possible with racing once a week as a 3rd cat. It feels like I have made up the ground lost due to crashing in June ruining the rest of my season and my chances of being a second cat as soon as I started the 2020 season.
Race overviews of all races since my last blog.
Oddown rd 3
A fairly windy race I attacked allot and after about 20 mins me and 2 other riders broke away. We stayed away for the rest of the race. On the last lap one of the riders attacked into the right hander at the end of the back straight. The 3rd rider in my break away chased him and then counter attacked into the hairpin. I knew from earlier in the race that I could corner faster than the other 2 on my break away so I used this to my advantage and caught the rider from my breakaway who counter attacked with almost no effort. I was positioned exactly where I wanted to be. Round the last corner I positioned myself just to the right of the rider in front as the wind was coming from the left, so the right was the sheltered side. The rider in front didn’t push me hard enough into the gutter so there was just enough space for me to kick through for the win. From my attacking efforts I was off the front on the prime so I won some socks.
Oddown rd 4
A very different race to the week before, there was almost no wind at all. I kept attacking but the peloton was not letting me get away and due to the still conditions, the race didn’t split up. With 15 mins to go I had decided that it was going to come down to a big bunch sprint. With one lap to go a few riders attacked off the front. They got caught with around 500 to go, the bunch stalled going into the bottom hair pin. To avoid getting swamped and loose positioning for the sprint I I sent it up the inside and came out the hairpin in something like 6th wheel. Into the last corner riders tried to dive bomb to move up. One of them was coming in way to hot and cut through the front of the group. This meant that 2 riders had a small gap on the rest of the field. With 200ish to go I started my sprint and reeled in the 2 off the front to take the win.
Oddown rd 5
The conditions were very similar to the week before. I attacked straight from the gun and dragged 1 rider with me. I dropped him after a lap and a-bit. I was solo for the next 15ish mins before 3 other riders bridged up to me. My goal for this race was to secure my second cat license so I did much. Longer turns on the front than I really needed to so that the group stayed away. In the last lap one of the riders attacked and then attacked again when we caught him. I was on the front leading coming up to the last corner, I swung wide to try and have a wheel to follow for the sprint but the other 2 riders sprinted underneath me and my legs were cooked from working hard on the front so I rolled in in 4th place.
In hindsight I should have kicked early to get the others to come round me and then tried the gap rush but it was a difficult one as rob and the other riders in the breakaway didn’t want to be in front of me from the sprint as in the previous rounds I had been outsprinting them
Oddown rd 6
A very windy race. On the second lap one of the wales racing academy riders attacked and I followed him. A few laps later Rob joined us to make it 3 at the front. After about 20 mins the welsh racing rider attacked and having been blown onto the grass and had to chase back on earlier that lap so I didn’t have the legs to go with him. I dropped back into the main group with the plan to sit in and follow until the bunch sprint as my legs still felt good. With 5 laps left I got hit by a big gust of wind and was blown on to the grass. By the time I had regained enough control to get my bike back onto the track the group had gone, and it was a lonely ride to the finish. A disappointing outcome from the race but I did get the prime when I was in the breakaway so got a norther pair of socks bringing my Oddown prime socks tally up to 4.
I am very happy with the racing of the last month and super pleased to have got my second cat licence.
The first half of lasts months training went really well, my hard week was just that – hard. The easy week after that had less bike volume than originally planned this was due to it being the first week back at school and feeling really dead after the hard week. The week after that was a really solid week of training. It is really nice having Wednesday afternoons off school to train, this will be especially useful as the weather starts to improve and I can get outside more. The next week was ok but a lack of hydration in my Wednesday session meant that my recovery was awful, and it took Thursday and Friday to recover. The race then took allot out of me, so Sunday I ended up just doing a Zwift race. Lesson learned HYDRATION IS KEY. Then the last week of January was a total mess. Apart from my gym session on Monday where I set a new deadlift pb of 140kgs. For whatever reason I was sick 3 times in the early hours of Tuesday morning. So, I missed both Tuesday and Wednesday of training and school. Thursday was just a seeing if the legs are ok and Friday, I did my normal pre-race session of rev outs. Saturday s race was really hard and given that I hadn’t really eaten properly all week I decided it would be. Best to have a shorter day on Sunday so I did a Zwift race then went out on my mtb.
The plan for the next 4 weeks.
3rd
A taper week for Perfs at on the 9th However at the time of writing this blog the weather is looking dodgy so that’s not a definite but it’s the plan.
10th
A easy week so I’m nice and fresh for half term
17th
A really hard week with big volume so hopefully the weather is good. If the weather is not good, then it’s going to be a week of really hard turbo efforts.
24th
An easy week to recover from the big half term block
