Rudderless

I dunno, it was all going so well. Too well, in fact.

When your season's goal is to try and make Cat 3 and you've done it by the end of February, what do you do then? Try and make Cat 2? That wasn't really a realistic goal, either in terms of my fitness or the amount of time I'd be able to throw at getting faster. So I did a couple of 2/3 races and got binned out the back, and kind of lost my focus a bit, and Summer races clashed with other Summer things, and suddenly everyone's smashing it because they've been racing all Summer and you've lost ground. 

And I wasn't doing anything structured: no intervals, no chaingangs, just riding. It was fun, but I wasn't really improving. My training plan came to an end, and to date I haven't ponied up for a new one.

My other season's goal was to try and complete a Super Randonneur series, and I managed the 200km to schedule. Then I missed the 300km due to work stuff and managed to replace it with a solo effort. But I got double booked on the 400km too. And then the 600km too. And suddenly it wasn't going to happen. Maybe next year.

It's been a busy time at the office and that hasn't helped, but now the site migration is done hopefully things will calm down a bit and leave me more time for training. Not that I couldn't have squeezed in some intervals on the turbo, because the sessions are mostly less than half an hour. But I'll blame work, rather than myself, I think.

The good news? The weight that I lost has stayed off, because I've been more or less sticking to the diet. More or less. And In the last month I've tried a road race (got dropped) and a 24hr relay race (the excellent Revolve24), as well as getting back on the turbo and the chaingang. And the Winter series are all popping up on the British Cycling website. The local one is 2/3s all Winter, so that should mean I get my head kicked in every week. Will it make me go faster? Maybe. I'll have to, if I want to get my money's worth.

So after a stellar start and some time in the Bath CC points leaders jersey, it's been a bit of a nothing season really, racing wise. The plan for the next one? To do the work over the winter again and then keep at it once the clocks go forward. Get a few points as a Cat 3. Race a bit more. Enjoy it. Is that woolly enough?