Winter Training, Baby!

The 1st of December has rolled around again which means a number of things... A new page on my Girls Aloud calendar, only 25 sleeps to Christmas and that training for the new season starts in earnest.

As Alistair pointed out, base training is the order of the day, I've been trying to keep going through November to prime myself a little but i had to take last week off to get a new mech and chain fitted (after the old ones had an unplanned coming together with my back wheel), and this week due to getting some wire removed from my elbow.

All in i reckon i've got 7kg to lose before the new season, but the KMB trip to Spain and Ali's fat jokes will help a lot. Me him and Vicky are flying from Liverpool to Malaga on Sunday for a week of long, warm (hopefully) base rides. I'll leave my ego at home and just keep one eye on the HRM and one on the scenery and I'll hopefully be in better shape when i get back than when I left. Sadly, i don' think i'll be pulling out the same sort of performances as one J. Ullrich when i saw him on Majorca a couple of years ago, twiddling along without a care in the world at 22mph on a 39x16!

Hopefully, i'll have some photos of the week to put up when i get back but before i set off i've still got to find my passport, clean my specializeds and remind the rest of them about Spain's killjoy helmet laws.

Phil likes: Vicky Pendleton's Oakly shoot.

Phil Dislikes: Muddy lanes.

ANIMAL TESTING

Last Sunday 3 Team KeswickBikes.co.uk riders gathered in Whitehaven to undergo the first round of testing with their new coach Andrew Patterson (http://www.pattersontraining.com/). Andrew Wrigley and Chris Hope made the decision to work with a coach to help them prepare for there major objective of 2008, the Trans Alp mountain bike stage race, and I decided a bit of structured training probably wasn't such a bad idea either.

Andy's new conservatory was the location of choice for some early morning ramp tests to determine our baseline performances. The gruelling 'test to exhaustion' protocol was just the ticket for a Sunday morning in late November and a cruel reminder of what really pushing yourself feels like.

Renowned power monster Andy Wrigley produced the biggest numbers but also topped the post test weigh in at .......... an undisclosed figure (at least for now). For myself i was left a little shy of donning my skin suit any time in the near future after the skin fat calipers revealed some terrible truths.

With our bench marks now in place it we just need to put in the hard miles to see how we improve (we hope!) for the next round of testing.

We would like to thank Andy Patterson for making the long trip up from Maccalsfieldup to do the testing and for his patience and words of encouragement while conducting three back to back tests. We'd also like to thank Andy W's wife for her patience in the face of invading cyclists.

Greetings from sunny Keswick

Having been a bit lax in race reports during the season i will be posting a season review in the near future. Currently i'm settling back into my base training after a well earned end of season break. The current unseasonal weather is making road night rides not just possible but a pleasure, hopefully the KeswickBikes.co.uk riders will be organizing a regular weekly night ride through the winter so look out for more details as to when and where. Until then get out there when the weathers good and when its not get out there anyway (or get a turbo trainer, they're great!).

Emotional Goodbye with Bike Imminent

Everyone from the team should now be able to post on the blog, so hopefully we will be updated on everyones progress and plans over the coming weeks.

I'm off to Morocco for a couple of weeks to do some climbing (of rocks, rather than roads), I scheduled this in specifically so that I would have a couple of weeks off the bike, as I know this wouldn't happen if I was sitting at home with a bike in front of me. It means that I will miss a couple of the cyclo cross league races that I wanted to do, but if I am going to have any time off then this can't be helped.

On return from Morocco I'll be off to Spain, as I said earlier, so I'll not be back on the bike in Sunny England until the middle of December, when hopefully I will be racing cyclo cross again.

TLI National Cyclo Cross Championships

I have decided to concentrate mainly on the TLI Cyclo Cross League this winter, mainly because they tend to be the closest and have the most competition for me. I am currently leading the league as the female with the most points.

Last weekend I did the Championships and was pleased with my 2nd place, as I feel as though I rode well. My main problem in any kind of off road race is my lack of any kind of technical ability, meaning I find myself having to sprint to catch up with other riders after any kind of sharp corner/steep bank/small bump in the gravel path. I'm hoping to work on this over the winter... Other than this the race went really well, the course was fairly technical with a steep bank to run up, some winding single track with steep banks and a long drag of a climb, as well as some flowing bumps on the decent where you could get some air (not sure cross bikes were every meant for this). I was first off the line and into the bottom of the bank where a mistake in getting off (I sort of crashed) meant I was second to the top of the hill, I started chasing but was passed by one of the other girls on around the 2nd lap. I then moved up into 2nd place which I maintained for the rest of the race. We did 5laps in all and the course was really hard, probably the hardest cross race I have done as there wasn't really anywhere at all to get a rest. Interestingly I now have a number of bruises about my person, many of these correspond exactly to the shape of my Jake the Snake when I carry it, others are more mysterious. Might start a Bruise Blog...

I also did another race in the league this weekend which I wasn't too pleased with, I was 3rd but didn't feel I put my all into the racing, my head wasn't in the right place. So, only another two races to do next weekend before my two week break, and then a training holiday with fellow team mates Ali and Phil to put some miles in my legs away from the rain and cloud of Cumbria.

Welcome to the Blog

Soooo, this is the new KMB blog. Mainly we wanted a way for it to be quick and easy for the KMB riders to update everyone on what they are doing at the moment. A convenient way to keep everyone in the know about their achievements in the world of bikes, this might be the latest race they have won, a place to comment on any new kit they have, or to ramble about how much they love their new bike when everyone else has got bored of listening to 'just how responsive it feels when you stand in the pedals'.

So here it is, happy reading!