Round 3

Rudy Project 3 is done and dusted, complete with ash from Eyjafjallajokull. Fortunately, that didn't hinder me from getting to and from Cumbria in a trusty hire car for the trifling sum of about £210. Petrol was quite a large chunk of that. Don't ask me how many times I stalled the car - haven't driven a manual for ages.

So 610miles (that's nearly 1000km in the new money) to race 31 miles/50km and finish third again. Pix here. Was it worth it? Financially, not even close although I did win £35. But for other reasons, it was.

Firstly, Cumbria itself. The landscape changes quite suddenly once you get into the Lakes District. The flatlands give way to massive hills with very little in the way of trees. There's still snow on some of the peaks too. And in the valleys, there are lakes. Hence the name.

>10 years ago I went to Lake Windermere with my aunt, although I don't remember a lot of the details. I suspect it was wet. This time it was dry, as it has been for an incredible three weeks. Until the day of the race of course, then it rained.

I stayed in Cockermouth, which is closeish to the sea and sits at the confluence of the Derwent and Cocker rivers, according to the Rough Guide to the Lake District. It was quiet, but it wasn't until I wandered into town in search of a bite to eat that I realised why. It had been hit quite badly by floods late last year, and the whole town was basically buggered. I'm surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen more often, as it's flat, situated at the edge of the hills and there are two rivers flowing through it.

Anyway, the main street was still shut. Every single building was closed and was undergoing major refurbishment. It's meant to reopen soon, but it doesn't look like it to me. Fortunately I found a friendly and non-flooded pub up the hill, and had a decent meal there.

The race

It was two laps of Lake Bassenthwaite. The first was slightly shorter than the second (24.6km to 25.5km) because the start and finish were in different places on the circuit. We rode two laps, everyone else did one.

Half of the circuit is flat and pretty fast, as it goes along the A66. The other half is on a B road and it's lumpy and bumpy as hell. But fun. We had a tailwind for that bit and a headwind for the flat bit. The headwind was still the fastest section though!

I was a bit worried about the rain before the start but it wasn't too bad. There was just one section on the first lap where I got hit by a squall and couldn't see much through my visor. A tip: don't try to wipe off water off your visor using greasy fingers.

Apart from that, it was fun. And I did a decent time of 1:08:10, which was 'only' 3'07 behind Hutch and 1'20 behind Bottrill. Remember Hutch put 6'20 into me in the national 25 last year and Bottrill 4'43, so relative to then I have improved, especially as yesterday's event was 31 miles.

I also increased the gap to Colin Robertson, who beat me by 13sec in the first round, then I beat in round two by 17sec. Yesterday it was 57 sec. That means I'm a clear second in the series: Bottrill has 178 points, me 174, Robertson 172. Essentially zero chance of catching Bottrill though.

A surprisingly small part of that improvement has been in my fitness, although I have made some gains in that area. The rest has been in equipment and position. I've now got quite a good idea of how much all the little bits are worth, and how much more I need to challenge Bottrill. I've got some secret weapons up my sleeve, to be tested in the next couple of weeks...

I noted a slight anomaly in my power data though. Although I did the second lap slightly quicker than the first (44.2km/h instead of 44.1), my power was a good 15W lower. I thought it might have been traffic on the final flat section, as I got none on the first lap but a few cars on lap 2. But it wasn't - in fact, the biggest difference was on the lumpy bumpy section. Lap 1: 10.634km in 14'35 @ 324W/332NP. Lap 2: 14'33 @ 306/316NP. So faster, for a lot less power, and there was essentially no traffic.

Maybe the bumps messed things up or maybe I just rode the second lap more efficiently because I knew what was coming up. Or maybe my disk loses power when it warms up. Or maybe - and probably most likely - I had a big tailwind on that lumpy section which dropped when I hit the final bit. And it was a big headwind at the end of the first lap.

I was also guilty of relaxing a bit too much on the second lap, which sounds strange but it's true. I will try harder next time.

Other tidbits

I gave a talk on TTing last week at the club. Despite it lasting for 45mins, half the audience were still awake at the finish. That's too many. I must try harder to be more soporific next time.

Ma and pa take note. ITV have done another series of Foyle's War. Which I'm sure will be heading to Oz at some stage. Liz can't quite understand why I like it.

On the volcano snuffing out the airline industry, it's yet another example of bleedin' elfin safety bringin' the country to its knees. I thought it was pretty cool. Also, if the airlines didn't make any money last week, then presumably someone else did. Some Johnny Foreigner no doubt, but we live in a global European economy innit. So it must all cancel out and we get cheaper bananas or something.

I'll stop there before I go all BNP. And yes, there is an election on here in a few weeks. By an amazing stroke of luck, I remembered to register to vote. So I will probably express my democratic right and vote for no-one who can make a difference.

Another

I think I just failed to think of a meaningful, search engine friendly title for this blog. All that SEO training, wasted.

Rudy Project 2 is done and dusted, and it was better than Rudy Project 1. I finished in the same position (3rd) but I beat Colin Robertson, who beat me in the first round. I would have been fourth had not Hutch punctured after one lap.

Ben had pretty reasonable ride for 7th. He injured his knee in Mallorca and is just getting over that, so is not 100%. He will be back, I'm sure.

I thought Sybrandy would edge out Bottrill and I was right. But I doubt whether he'll ride all the rounds, so Bottrill is still the outright favourite to take the series. Ignoring regional points, which won't count if you ride 5 national rounds, I'm effectively equal second at the moment. That ain't bad.

I was mostly happy with my ride last Saturday (photog here). It was lovely and warm and there was a light but steady NE blowing. The course had almost no traffic on it at all, even on the dual carriageway section (because everyone was on the M3) - that's ideal for everyone. It didn't have any potholes either, but it was for some reason a very slow course. I think because the road surface for most of it was dead and we head a headwind for two of the three gradual uphill drags.

I made a couple of errors: 1) putting 130psi into my tyres because I thought the road surface would be better. 115-120 would have been better for rolling resistance, instead of being bounced around everywhere. 2) I didn't have my helmet on properly, so it kept moving around and tilting down. Not enough to impair visibility but enough to tip the tail up, which is bad for airflow. It felt it, anyway.

On the other hand, my pacing was absolutely perfect. I averaged the same power and speed for both laps, although the second lap felt a lot harder! Funnily enough Dean Robson, who won the RP series last year and started 2min behind me, was 30sec up on me after 16km. But by the end of the race (57km) I'd pulled that back and put another 1'18 into him. He said to me afterwards he'd tried to rein it in on the first lap but obviously not enough.

I was also happy that I averaged the same power that I did for the first round, but for 22min longer. I think getting rid of the cough has helped.

Round 3 is next week in Cumbria. 5 hours driving each way for a 1hr race! Oh well, it's good to have a fling occasionally. With Hutch (who is using it to try to gain Commonwealth Games selection) and Bottrill both down to start, the best I can hope for is third. And I'll still have to ride well.

Training-wise, the PowerTap is a useful teacher. It tells me how fit I am without me having to worry about whether a time A around a certain course or up a hill is better than time B for a given heart rate. Which is what I've relied on until now.

I still train on how I feel, but the power meter allows me to objectively assess how good the session was (or is). And that allows me to fine tune things, which is desirous when one is trying to be careful about one's training. 'One' being me in this case.

For example, over the last three weeks I've managed to add 12W to my 1hr training pace, extend that to 1hr20, as well as add 20W to my 4min intervals, plus get a decent idea of my 5min power. Admittedly I was ill for a bit so most of that is returning to fitness rather than building on what I had. But I'll keep plugging away over the next few weeks to see where I get to by the fourth Rudy Project round on May 9.

Then there's a break before tackling a few more races in May and June, including the National 25 and 50. I'm looking forward to the 25 after last year's OK but not stellar performance.

At some stage I'll need to think about a 12hr. I'm putting that thought to one side.

Off to Sevenoaks this weekend to watch Liz do her first race of the year!

Time passes, again. And lo, it is getting warmer and lighter. This is a Good Thing.

With some further ado:

I. I got sick after the Chippenham hilly, as did half the people in the office. Although it didn't feel too bad and I didn't end up off the bike for too many days, I ended up with a lingering cough that I've still got the remnants of. Update: I think it's gone.

II. The first Rudy Project didn't quite go according to plan, but it wasn't bad. I finished 3rd with 58'31 behind Matt Bottrill (57'03) and Colin Robertson (58'18).

Although I felt OK, my wattage was well down on the Chippenham hilly, otherwise a sub-58min ride may have been on the cards. I wasn't going to get near Bottrill though, but I knew that. Last year in the national 25 he put nearly 5min into me (he was 4th, I was 43rd), so I have closed the gap a bit.

III. I seem to have recovered most of my fitness since then, so I'm looking forward to next week's Rudy Project 2. The best I can hope for there is 4th, as Hutch and Wouter Sybrandy are doing it, along with Bottrill, Robertson and quite a few of the a3crg team, who are pretty handy. It's 58km so I'll be doing really well if I can keep Hutch at 5min, Sybrandy at 3min and Bottrill at 2min.

IV. Easter didn't involve a large number of miles this year. Even so, I still did my biggest week in terms of TSS (training stress) of the season, without going past 3hrs in a single ride.

V. The power meter tells you quite accurately how many calories you burn. Watts x time (sec)/1000 = ~kcal burned, because the conversion factor between watts and cals roughly cancels the efficiency our body has in converting food energy to power on the bike. Nifty innit.

VI. Last week I burned 10,700 cals on the bike, which when you add that to 2500/day for getting to work and back and generally existing, it means I need to eat 4000 cals/day. Family and close associates can attest to the fact that I do eat this, most of the time. It's about 5kg of potatoes a day, which is why I need chocolate in copious quantities.

VII. Fabian Cancellara supposedly averaged 285W (normalised, I dunno, but it would have been a lot higher) to win the Tour of Flanders. That doesn't sound like much, especially as he's 1.86m tall and 80kg. But that's because a lot of it was spent noodling around in the bunch. But you can be sure that in the last half hour, after dropping Tom Boonen on the Muur, he was at over 400 watts hurtling towards Ninove at 60km/h. Milan San Remo, Paris-Roubaix, Tour of Flanders, World and Olympic TT champ, Tour yellow jersey - he's a class bike rider.