>
No snow this week. It was even quite warm. A light breeze kept the average speed down.
I achieved a couple of targets today:
- I led the bunch for about a third of a lap (the tailwind section). It took a couple of laps to recover from that.
- I tried to break away. I don’t think anyone noticed. It took a few laps to recover from that.
- I tried to sprint at the end. This failed because I was over-geared, too far back and sprinted like a blancmange. If I had got it right I might have got 22nd place rather than 23rd.
It was interesting to see some of those ahead of me taking to the grass as the real sprint opened up – someone had pulled a foot out of their pedal.
It’s not really safe to practice sprinting from 30th position as the people in front are sitting up. I need to do some solo work in training. Being a dumb tester I think I’m going to have to work on a long sprint. I was doing 30 second ‘100%’ intervals earlier on in the Winter, but I’ve eased off these to try and get ride of persistent ‘almost-a-cold’ symptoms.
Stats: position – 23rd out of 35 finishers, race distance – 18.23 miles, race time – 46:16, average speed – 23.6mph, average HR – 160bpm, maximum HR – 172bpm, top speed – 29.1mph (in the ‘sprint’), fastest mile (the 8th) – 2:22 (25.4mph), slowest mile (the 1st) – 2:58 (20.2mph).
My average HR was lower than it has been, which is good. I did some proper level 2 recovery rides this week which may have helped.
Winner: Antony Leeson, Addiscombe CC.
Photograph by Lucy Collins via LondonCycleSport.
Lance Woodman 