In some particular order, but perhaps not the most logical one:
The tendon/calf thingy is on the mend, although it's a few weeks off being 100%. MRI scan today said 'it's inflamed', which I could have determined without traipsing up to Cheltenham and paying a couple of hundred quid for the privilege. But I will get the full report in a few days, which should tell me more. It is definitely not as sore as it was a week ago, so that's a good thing.
I still managed to lose a little bit of fitness over the last two weeks, as I found out in the Ba'ath hilly on Sunday (it's 24 miles not 25.7). Chris Birch turned the tables and convincingly beat me by 41 seconds. My average power was 5-6W down on what it was at the Chippenham hilly, which doesn't sound much but it's ~25 seconds over an hour long event. Not enough to make the difference though. I would have needed to be at my 2008 summer level to win.
Nevertheless, I was pretty happy with my ride. My pacing wasn't bad, although it was hard to judge because I didn't really know how hard to go. I got over the hills OK but my heart rate was often in the mid-180s, which normally doesn't happen. I kept just enough in the tank for the final 6.5km drag (a 1% false flat) to the finish. It was a head/crosswind at that point and I somehow held 335W for the next 10 minutes. I hit 188 bpm and cramped in both thighs at the top. Perfect, really.
With 58'29 I snuck under the old course record, but by then Chris had already clocked 57'48. C'est la vie. In fact, five people went under the hour and it would have been six had Dave Kiddell not been held up by cows! Prior to Sunday, the course had been used just twice for this event, and only two people had beaten the hour on it. So the competition wasn't bad.
I also beat everyone who was beating me at this time last year and I got another 120 hardrider points 'cos Chris Birch isn't registered in the series. We won the team prize which meant I won two cakes, one of which I have not yet consumed.
Next race: WTTA hilly in a couple of weeks. I hope it doesn't snow like last year. I will avoid eating dodgy curries too. Saturday was better.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Hello
An interesting week, one of mixed fortunes for myself and others (go Sam!). I suppose it is the Ides of March so I should expect it.
The injury for starters. The physio noticed a small improvement in my torn calf, although the tendon is still inflamed which means it gets painful on the bike. I've been riding easy for an hour and a half most days and I tend to find it's OK for about 30 minutes before it starts getting sore. Then during the course of the day it settles down and is often almost pain free by the time I get home. That's definitely better than it was but because I ride first thing in the morning, it doesn't have time to settle.
I'm due to get an MRI next week in order to fully assess the damage. That ain't going to be cheap but it's better to know, especially as it is the start of what could be another good season. I suspect I'll just have to keep riding easy/rest for the next three to four weeks until it heals, although I do have one race on the menu next Sunday.
The good thing from my point of view is that I can afford to take it steady as I doubt I'll lose much fitness. Winning last Sunday was very good for my confidence (pics here). 54'10 for 39km! I couldn't believe I averaged 43km/h and broke the bloody course record on such a windy day. For comparison, last year our winning 3-up team did 53'24 on an almost identical course on a calm but foggy day. Second placed VC St Raphael did 54'12...
There's no need to rush things, as I don't really want to be going well until the second half of April with a view to lifting that for the National 10 and 25 in late May/early June. I doubt I'll place highly in the National 10 but a top 20 in the National 25 would be cool.
Humpty Doo nearly total recall
Back to team time trials. I've been perusing a few triathlon mags that have been idly left around the office (our almost launched new mag, Triathlon Plus, is going to be tres good). On the cover of one I noticed a chap by the name of Craig Alexander, who has won the Hawaii Ironman triathlon twice. It's considered the top race in the sport so this guy is hot property in the triathlon world. His name rang a bell so I delved into my memory banks, with the help of google, and found out that he's roughly my age, lives in Sydney, and used to go to uni.
Ding! (another bell sound effect)
I then remembered that at the 1995 university games in Darwin, we had a couple of triathletes in our team time trial team, along with Brent McParland and me. One of them was Mr Alexander! He was pretty handy on the bike back then and fitted in well to our team on the basis of our sole training session together.
The TTT was a dead flat, out-and-back 50km jobbie at a place called Humpty Doo, somewhere south of Darwin. We were all pretty evenly matched and everyone pulled their weight, including the triathletes. I even skipped a turn or two on the way back. We ended up winning fairly convincingly in 1:04:something. Uni of WA had to settle for second, unless my memory is as bad as it very likely is.
So that's my Craig Alexander story. It's almost as good as passing Robbie McEwen's team in the TTT in Brisbane a few years previously.
Interestingly, he's still riding the same depth rims as he did in 1995. Gotta get a disk mate!
Weather
Drizzly last week but improving to dry and 10-15 degrees this week. That's excellent for the Ides of March so you'll hear no complaints from moi. If it continues through until next weekend, it will be a Good Thing. Not just 'cos it's the Bath Hilly either. Things are looking promising after the coffee wars episode, possibly.
More news, anon.
The injury for starters. The physio noticed a small improvement in my torn calf, although the tendon is still inflamed which means it gets painful on the bike. I've been riding easy for an hour and a half most days and I tend to find it's OK for about 30 minutes before it starts getting sore. Then during the course of the day it settles down and is often almost pain free by the time I get home. That's definitely better than it was but because I ride first thing in the morning, it doesn't have time to settle.
I'm due to get an MRI next week in order to fully assess the damage. That ain't going to be cheap but it's better to know, especially as it is the start of what could be another good season. I suspect I'll just have to keep riding easy/rest for the next three to four weeks until it heals, although I do have one race on the menu next Sunday.
The good thing from my point of view is that I can afford to take it steady as I doubt I'll lose much fitness. Winning last Sunday was very good for my confidence (pics here). 54'10 for 39km! I couldn't believe I averaged 43km/h and broke the bloody course record on such a windy day. For comparison, last year our winning 3-up team did 53'24 on an almost identical course on a calm but foggy day. Second placed VC St Raphael did 54'12...
There's no need to rush things, as I don't really want to be going well until the second half of April with a view to lifting that for the National 10 and 25 in late May/early June. I doubt I'll place highly in the National 10 but a top 20 in the National 25 would be cool.
Humpty Doo nearly total recall
Back to team time trials. I've been perusing a few triathlon mags that have been idly left around the office (our almost launched new mag, Triathlon Plus, is going to be tres good). On the cover of one I noticed a chap by the name of Craig Alexander, who has won the Hawaii Ironman triathlon twice. It's considered the top race in the sport so this guy is hot property in the triathlon world. His name rang a bell so I delved into my memory banks, with the help of google, and found out that he's roughly my age, lives in Sydney, and used to go to uni.
Ding! (another bell sound effect)
I then remembered that at the 1995 university games in Darwin, we had a couple of triathletes in our team time trial team, along with Brent McParland and me. One of them was Mr Alexander! He was pretty handy on the bike back then and fitted in well to our team on the basis of our sole training session together.
The TTT was a dead flat, out-and-back 50km jobbie at a place called Humpty Doo, somewhere south of Darwin. We were all pretty evenly matched and everyone pulled their weight, including the triathletes. I even skipped a turn or two on the way back. We ended up winning fairly convincingly in 1:04:something. Uni of WA had to settle for second, unless my memory is as bad as it very likely is.
So that's my Craig Alexander story. It's almost as good as passing Robbie McEwen's team in the TTT in Brisbane a few years previously.
Interestingly, he's still riding the same depth rims as he did in 1995. Gotta get a disk mate!
Weather
Drizzly last week but improving to dry and 10-15 degrees this week. That's excellent for the Ides of March so you'll hear no complaints from moi. If it continues through until next weekend, it will be a Good Thing. Not just 'cos it's the Bath Hilly either. Things are looking promising after the coffee wars episode, possibly.
More news, anon.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Birth, omloop and injury
Stop press: My sister has finally produced an offspring, a boy named Sam. Born on the same day as Pete, which should save on presents. Very exciting for us Joneses and Boyds! That makes me an uncle. Luckily she didn't have a girl or I would have been an aunt, a maiden one at that.
Het Omloop
Het Volk
© Jeff Jones
This year's Het Volk (now renamed to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, grr) visit was for a whole week. Longer than the usual weekend because I'm still trying to use up my 2008 holiday.
It afforded the chance to bring my bike over in order to do the Schelde ride again as well as revisit some of my old training routes and mates. It was the first time since 2006 and I now realise why I got such a shock when I first moved to the UK. For one, Belgium is flat. Really flat. Even the hilly rides are flat. Secondly, the road surfaces are better. It's so much easier to roll along at a decent clip when you're on smooth asphalt rather than coarse aggregate.
I did a one hour out and back effort at a bit over 80% of max on the first day. 37.5km for my pains, which ain't bad on the road bike, especially as it was only 4 degrees. My record a few years ago was closer to 40km, but that was when it was actually warm and I was probably a bit fitter.
I caught up with the Sunderland clan on the first day, visiting a dinosaur museum in Brussels. I still find dinosaurs amazing - they were around for hundreds of millions of years and never even blogged about it. Then they went and got themselves wiped out by some climactic event. Not that that could ever happen again.
This exhib in Brussels was apparently the largest in Europe. The most impressive was a display of the 30 Iguanodons that had been dug up in a Belgian coal mine. Eight of their skeletons had all been reconstructed in upright positions, as it was first thought they were mostly bipedal. But it's now considered more likely that they spent most of their lives on all fours. Their very well developed 'arms' are a clue.
A triceratops looking starved
© Jeff Jones
A tyrannosaurus looking starved and mean
© Jeff Jones
That's a big leg bone
© Jeff Jones
Checkin' out the Grand Place
© Jeff Jones
Van Gogh lives!
© Jeff Jones
The well known manneken pis
© Jeff Jones
The little known Jeanneke pis
© Jeff Jones
I also managed a couple of rides with Scott during the rest of the week. He's still fit for someone who doesn't ride that much. Alas, while following him up a hill I made the mistake of looking behind me for a bit too long. When I turned around, I'd overlapped his wheel, overbalanced and down I came on my right side. I was barely hurt and thought nothing of it until I got home and found walking was rather painful. Turns out I think I tore my lower calf muscle, which is a bit of a bugger. More of that later.
I saw several of the Schelde riders, notably De Witte, but also Henk, Lucien and Jules. Unfortunately there have been a couple of (non-cycling related) deaths among the group in the last few years, but at least three births to balance them. Such is the way of the world.
On the pie shop front, Reiny and Gwen are doing well, even in these times of the credit crunch(tm). They're still working hard but the business is steadily picking up. 'Twas nice to stay with them again and remain at moderately sober for the entire week, despite them having acquired a crate of Jupiler that almost literally fell off the back of a truck. Luckily I don't like Jupiler that much. Promising news: Cafe Igor has now been gutted and is being turned into a microbrewery. I tried some of the beer and it was good. This bodes well.
Future beer!
© Jeff Jones
We met up with Gregg and Holly Germer at Pane & Vino one evening. They are top value: Holly works at one of the Irish pubs while Gregg has moved from there to doing a factory job. He was a bike rider and did ride as a pro for at least one year before getting a job that paid a bit better. He's in the process of allocating a chunk of his and Holly's large house in Oudenaarde to bike riders as a base for the season, with a view to turning it into a proper business venture.
The Omloop itself was quite pleasant. I moseyed around the start in Sint Pietersplein, taking the odd pic before catching up with Aussies Andrew Torney and Karl Becker and their kids for 'n koffietje. They are well settled in Belgium although the call back home is still there. Apparently the winter in Belgium was a lot colder than what we had in the UK: it got down to -22 somewhere, and it was even -12 in Gent. So all the lakes and canals were frozen and many were skateable. Not great riding weather and not surprisingly, I heard there were a few crashes in the bunch.
Unlike previous years, the Omloop night out was not a big affair. We caught up with Reiny's ex-shop helper at a passable French restaurant in the Patershol, but didn't extend the evening beyond that. It ain't easy to recover when you're working flat out six days out of seven.
Cycling can be cras at times
© Jeff Jones
More volk
© Jeff Jones
Andrew Torney and son
© Jeff Jones
Return: injury confirmed
I got back to Bath on Sunday but it took me until Friday before I got to a physio to figure out what the problem with my ankle was. It also involved a walk up (and down) Lansdown Road, which probably wasn't ideal! The upshot was that I've probably torn my soleus (lower calf) but I need to get an ultrasound next week to make sure. I think the rehab will take several weeks and a few hundred quid - also not ideal. But it's got to be done. I also might be able to do something about my comparatively weak left side, which has given me problems in the past.
The good thing is that I can still keep riding. Even riding to work is better than walking, so I'll do that. I'm also allowed to race, provided I don't sprint hard or push too much if it's painful (painkillers are definitely out of the question too), because there is a small chance I could rupture the tendon. That would be bad.
So tomorrow I'll do the Chippenham hilly, but not with any particular ambition other than maybe to sneak in for the team prize. Pity because up until the crash I was going well. No point in buggering up the rest of the season though, so it'll be steady as she goes.
Tomorrow's results
Better than I thought. Much better. I won in 54'10 in a new course record on what could be described as a 'blustery' day. And yep, we won the team prize with Ben and Rob Gough.
My leg didn't give me too much gyp so I could push it as hard as I needed to. Actually it probably helped me not go out too hard. As a result, my pacing was spot on. I averaged 325W - about 10W lower than my best power over that distance last summer - and each leg was pretty consistent (hur hur). I started halfway down the field and did cop a little bit of rain in the last 10 minutes, but not nearly as bad as the guys who started behind me...
Now, two weeks off racing before the Bath hilly. Hopefully my injury will be right by then. I can't imagine it'll get worse as I've now got a physio and am doing the right things to fix it (Ice ice baby. Maybe I should just stand outside in the sleet).
Het Omloop
Het Volk© Jeff Jones
This year's Het Volk (now renamed to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, grr) visit was for a whole week. Longer than the usual weekend because I'm still trying to use up my 2008 holiday.
It afforded the chance to bring my bike over in order to do the Schelde ride again as well as revisit some of my old training routes and mates. It was the first time since 2006 and I now realise why I got such a shock when I first moved to the UK. For one, Belgium is flat. Really flat. Even the hilly rides are flat. Secondly, the road surfaces are better. It's so much easier to roll along at a decent clip when you're on smooth asphalt rather than coarse aggregate.
I did a one hour out and back effort at a bit over 80% of max on the first day. 37.5km for my pains, which ain't bad on the road bike, especially as it was only 4 degrees. My record a few years ago was closer to 40km, but that was when it was actually warm and I was probably a bit fitter.
I caught up with the Sunderland clan on the first day, visiting a dinosaur museum in Brussels. I still find dinosaurs amazing - they were around for hundreds of millions of years and never even blogged about it. Then they went and got themselves wiped out by some climactic event. Not that that could ever happen again.
This exhib in Brussels was apparently the largest in Europe. The most impressive was a display of the 30 Iguanodons that had been dug up in a Belgian coal mine. Eight of their skeletons had all been reconstructed in upright positions, as it was first thought they were mostly bipedal. But it's now considered more likely that they spent most of their lives on all fours. Their very well developed 'arms' are a clue.
A triceratops looking starved© Jeff Jones
A tyrannosaurus looking starved and mean© Jeff Jones
That's a big leg bone© Jeff Jones
Checkin' out the Grand Place© Jeff Jones
Van Gogh lives!© Jeff Jones
The well known manneken pis© Jeff Jones
The little known Jeanneke pis© Jeff Jones
I also managed a couple of rides with Scott during the rest of the week. He's still fit for someone who doesn't ride that much. Alas, while following him up a hill I made the mistake of looking behind me for a bit too long. When I turned around, I'd overlapped his wheel, overbalanced and down I came on my right side. I was barely hurt and thought nothing of it until I got home and found walking was rather painful. Turns out I think I tore my lower calf muscle, which is a bit of a bugger. More of that later.
I saw several of the Schelde riders, notably De Witte, but also Henk, Lucien and Jules. Unfortunately there have been a couple of (non-cycling related) deaths among the group in the last few years, but at least three births to balance them. Such is the way of the world.
On the pie shop front, Reiny and Gwen are doing well, even in these times of the credit crunch(tm). They're still working hard but the business is steadily picking up. 'Twas nice to stay with them again and remain at moderately sober for the entire week, despite them having acquired a crate of Jupiler that almost literally fell off the back of a truck. Luckily I don't like Jupiler that much. Promising news: Cafe Igor has now been gutted and is being turned into a microbrewery. I tried some of the beer and it was good. This bodes well.
Future beer!© Jeff Jones
We met up with Gregg and Holly Germer at Pane & Vino one evening. They are top value: Holly works at one of the Irish pubs while Gregg has moved from there to doing a factory job. He was a bike rider and did ride as a pro for at least one year before getting a job that paid a bit better. He's in the process of allocating a chunk of his and Holly's large house in Oudenaarde to bike riders as a base for the season, with a view to turning it into a proper business venture.
The Omloop itself was quite pleasant. I moseyed around the start in Sint Pietersplein, taking the odd pic before catching up with Aussies Andrew Torney and Karl Becker and their kids for 'n koffietje. They are well settled in Belgium although the call back home is still there. Apparently the winter in Belgium was a lot colder than what we had in the UK: it got down to -22 somewhere, and it was even -12 in Gent. So all the lakes and canals were frozen and many were skateable. Not great riding weather and not surprisingly, I heard there were a few crashes in the bunch.
Unlike previous years, the Omloop night out was not a big affair. We caught up with Reiny's ex-shop helper at a passable French restaurant in the Patershol, but didn't extend the evening beyond that. It ain't easy to recover when you're working flat out six days out of seven.
Cycling can be cras at times© Jeff Jones
More volk© Jeff Jones
Andrew Torney and son© Jeff Jones
Return: injury confirmed
I got back to Bath on Sunday but it took me until Friday before I got to a physio to figure out what the problem with my ankle was. It also involved a walk up (and down) Lansdown Road, which probably wasn't ideal! The upshot was that I've probably torn my soleus (lower calf) but I need to get an ultrasound next week to make sure. I think the rehab will take several weeks and a few hundred quid - also not ideal. But it's got to be done. I also might be able to do something about my comparatively weak left side, which has given me problems in the past.
The good thing is that I can still keep riding. Even riding to work is better than walking, so I'll do that. I'm also allowed to race, provided I don't sprint hard or push too much if it's painful (painkillers are definitely out of the question too), because there is a small chance I could rupture the tendon. That would be bad.
So tomorrow I'll do the Chippenham hilly, but not with any particular ambition other than maybe to sneak in for the team prize. Pity because up until the crash I was going well. No point in buggering up the rest of the season though, so it'll be steady as she goes.
Tomorrow's results
Better than I thought. Much better. I won in 54'10 in a new course record on what could be described as a 'blustery' day. And yep, we won the team prize with Ben and Rob Gough.
My leg didn't give me too much gyp so I could push it as hard as I needed to. Actually it probably helped me not go out too hard. As a result, my pacing was spot on. I averaged 325W - about 10W lower than my best power over that distance last summer - and each leg was pretty consistent (hur hur). I started halfway down the field and did cop a little bit of rain in the last 10 minutes, but not nearly as bad as the guys who started behind me...
Now, two weeks off racing before the Bath hilly. Hopefully my injury will be right by then. I can't imagine it'll get worse as I've now got a physio and am doing the right things to fix it (Ice ice baby. Maybe I should just stand outside in the sleet).
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