It's hotting up

We've had a rather sudden rise in temperatures in the last week. It went from a max of 8 with a biting NE wind to 27 in the space of about 10 days. Quelle shock to the system.

I've decided that I like it between 16 and 20 degs. It's not hot but I can still get away with wearing shorts and a short sleeve jersey. It looks like returning to that level this week, as it was for most of last week.

I've started training more in the evenings 'cos it's light until 9 and it's nice to get out after work and hammer. Thus, last Monday I managed to take another 45sec off (now 58'58) and add 5W to my PB for my 39km training circuit. It was done with an unhelpful NW wind too, which really surprised me. That's a full 2min quicker than I ever did last year.

Then on Wednesday I went out and did some shorter intervals. I flew up Kingsdown in 6'28 @ 390W - best ever time - then managed two 4'40 efforts up the other side, also at 390W. And I threw in another one for good measure at 333W, which felt quite comfortable.

Fast forward to Saturday's Bristol South 10 on the U7B (aka The Graveyard), and I thought I'd have a decent chance at the course record of 20'44. Last year, not particularly fit, I managed 20'50 on a warmish day, SW wind, with lots of traffic 'cos the M5 was shut.

This time around it was warmer, the wind was from the east, which meant we had a headwind on the longer outward leg and a tailwind for the slightly uphill return leg. And although I rode my fast front wheel + the visor + I should have been fitter, I was only 2sec quicker than last year. 20'48, argh!

It was a decent time, more than enough to win. Rob Pears, no slouch at 10s, was 40sec back, then Robin Coomber and David Kiddell tied for third at 1'17.

Going out I could feel it was going to be too slow. 11'19 to the turnaround (8.4km) was not good enough. Last year I did it in 10'25, but the wind was in the opposite direction.

I had also gone a bit hard on the way out so tried to nurse myself over the hills on the way back. There are four rollers in succession and I knew I couldn't afford to lose much speed on these because there wasn't enough downhill to make up the time. So on each one I went hard then recovered slightly on the descent, then went hard again, repeat until out of breath.

I surprised myself by completing the last 7.7km in 9'29 (last year it was 10'25, headwind but plenty of traffic). An average of 48.6km/h, which is not bad for a slightly uphill return. But it wasn't quite enough to break the course record.

Disappointingly, I really felt the heat and my power suffered as a result. 322W average, whereas I know I'm capable of at least 345W at the moment. But my heart rate was through the roof, so I know I gave it everything.

Everyone else was in the same boat of course. Rob really suffered in his black skinsuit! Also at the National 10 the next day, plenty of people reported being 10% down on watts because of the temperature. The only good thing about the heat is that it lowers the air density. But in this case, not quite enough to offset the drop in power.

Sarah Storey had a good idea: wear an ice vest. It's your core temperature that's important to keep low so ideally you should sit somewhere cool until you're ready to warm up.

In my case, riding 45km to the start with a backpack on probably wasn't ideal.

Oh well, maybe I'll have another go at it later in the year. For now it's back to training until the National 25 in a couple of weeks, then a 100, then the National 50.

If I can keep Hutch to around about 3min in the National 25, I'll be happy. Easier said than done. He put 43sec into Olympic gold medallist Ed Clancy in the National 10 yesterday. Based on recent form I wonder how I might have gone, but I did want to keep a month free of 'big' races in order not to knacker myself mentally.

We shall see.

Monday

It's been a chilly May bank holiday weekend in the UK. The north wind is back and there's even been some snow in North Scotlandshire. I have availed myself of the opportunity to catch up on some (it turned out to be a lot) sleep. And doing my best to avoid getting Liz's cold.

I've also been accosted in the street by a local electioneering candidate, or so he claimed. He was dressed head to toe in a weird kind of magician's suit. Could well have been the invisible man. He gave me his policy statement, both on paper and verbally, and I couldn't understand either. Utterly bonkers.

A few weeks ago the local conservative candidate rang my doorbell. This is usually a waste of time because I never answer it unless I know who it will be. I don't like surprises, see. I didn't recognise the candidate until I saw a pic last week. I thought it was just an underling spreading the good word.

He assumed correctly that I was an apathetic voter and wanted to go into my reasons for being apathetic. Unfortunately I was too apathetic to want to engage in any kind of discussion. The most he got out of me was that I wasn't sure I'd registered to vote. Later on it transpired that I had, so I will prove myself to be unapathetic and vote on Thursday (it is on Thursday innit?). Maybe for the magician, maybe for the silly party, maybe for someone with a decent cycling policy. That doesn't leave many options.

It won't make a difference in my electorate, as it's a pretty safe Lib Dem seat. If only I lived in my cousin's electorate in Battersea - he won by around 160 votes last time, so I could make a difference there.

I wonder if we'll get a hung parliament? I think we deserve it.

Fietsen

My bicycle training seems to be more or less on track. For what, I'm not quite sure, but all I know is that it's better to be on track than off it. The latter is very easy to do.

Last week was an interesting one. I had to cram everything in between Wednesday and Sunday, which meant I started quite fresh but finished quite tired.

On Wednesday I did my usual laps up around Kingsdown. Door to door, it's 57.7km and the middle bit is 38.9km of different laps around Kingsdown and Atworth.

I had a day off work so I afforded myself the luxury of leaving at 11am when it was nice and warm (18 degs!). I'm always surprised at how much difference the temperature makes to your speed and Wednesday proved it once again. My previous best times for that course were 1hr40 (1:01:54 for the middle bit) in summer 2008, 1hr39 (1:00:50) in summer 2009 and 1hr38 (1:01:27) nearly two weeks ago (this year). The 2008 and 2009 bests were done on warm days, also leaving later in the morning.

Last Wednesday blew those out of the water. I did the overall 57.7km in 1hr34 and the middle 38.9km in 59:43. Somewhat annoyingly, this wasn't down to a large increase in power. Only +3W on the previous PB, in fact. But the temperature difference was +13 degrees, which also meant I could wear less bulky gear, and what little wind there was was in the best direction (S) rather than NW. All of that adds up. Dang, tomorrow is 4 degrees with a NW wind.

Looking at just this year's data, I started with these rides in late February with 1:38:30 (1:02:00), also on a decent day when I left late. I didn't have power data for that ride though. Then I got sick and resumed in late March with 1:43:30 (1:04:39) on an awfully cold and foggy day, gradually improving my times/power over the last five and a bit weeks.

The near 10min improvement in overall time is impressive. It's taken +30W, +16 degrees and lighter clothing to do that. The 5+min improvement in the middle part has taken a more modest +18W. If I could do that every 5 weeks I'd be national champion come September. Lol.

How much faster is that fitness making me though? At that speed over that distance, every watt is worth about 4-5sec. So had conditions and equipment been the same for every ride, I'd expect to see a 1'10-1'30 improvement over the last five weeks. That's sort of been reflected in the Rudy Project results, although other riders could have improved over that time too. And because speeds are higher, the time improvements will be lower for a given wattage.

Prior to getting a power meter, all of this would have been guesswork. And given how much difference conditions make, any gains in fitness could easily have been swamped by changes in the weather, tyre pressure and clothing.

That would have been terrible!