Lost With Life

Turbo Trainer Training

There are just some days where everything goes wrong and all the people I was going to ride with pull out. This is where the motivation to go riding in the dark and on my own drops to about zero.

There is one saving grace in the world of rain, darkness and all things not so nice outside. The turbo trainer, hook it up and spin away for 40 minuites and you feel like you have got a proper work out.

Did 5 minuites warm up followed by five one minuite increments in resistance and then 5 minuites dropping back down and then building back up again. Did this three times and felt like I was getting a real workout. Five minuites cool down and then a shower and ready for dinner….

Happy days…..

I think I should have done this?

Well I went to get my bike to cycle to work this morning to discover that my road bike had a flat, grrrr…. Maybe I should carefully carry my bike along the cycle lanes to work every day so I dont get any puntures.

So in the space of a week I have got two puntures and a split side wall cycling to work. Think its maybe time to put some better heavy duty tyres on my road bike. On the up side it means I will be a bit more fresh for some single speeding tonight, happy days….

Single Speed Champtionships Flyer

With thanks to Sebastian the single speed national championships now has a poster.

Single Speed Riding

Yesterday was national trails day in Ireland so we spent the day in the sun showing lots of people how to mountain bike and some of the man made trails in ballinstowe.  Decided that it would be more fun on my single speed so spent the day struggling up the hills and then bumbling back down making sure people did not snot them selves.

Think we had 30 people from the club out and in the end about 55 people came to try mountain biking. Every one had smiles at the end of the day and a few seemed like they might come back and try it again which is always a good thing.

Riding a Jump

Map of loop

I have not been on the single speed since Tuesday as I have not been feeling very well and also been very busy in the evenings. This has been really annoying because the weather has been so nice and I am starting to enjoy getting back out on the bike regularly.

Today I had a free day so decided to go off with some friends and do a smallish but yet quite technical loop. I decided to take my single speed as I wanted to see what it would be like on a bit longer spin and I was so glad I did. The weather for the whole spin was superb so I did not mind having to walk up one or two of the steeper climbs.

I did have to walk one of two the steeper technical climbs but was really happy with how I biked as I thought I would end up walking a lot more. Hopefully this means that my legs are getting stronger and all the struggling up hills is paying off. The new 80mm fork I thought might be a bit strange on some of the more technical descents but was not a bother in the end and I think I am now riding as much stuff as my full sus, just maybe a little slower.

In the end we did 37km of biking with 950m of climbing in about 4 hours which is slower than my normal ride but due to the fact I am dead to the world is certainly was a hard work out. All I need to do now is chip away at the distance on the single speed this winter and I will come out a lot stronger next year.

Loop KML

Elevation of loop

Sunny Skies on the Trail

The climb I had to walk up (Boo Hoo!!)

Managed to climb up the fire roads with no problem

Geared riders always behind the single speed (Well some time)

The wicklow way, nice and rocky but a great laugh

Well after a week of sorting out our new house nearer the hills I have finally got round to plugging in my garmin to down load my data for the last few weeks. Looking back on last weeks marathon it really was deadly… defo think I am moving more and more towards long distance events rather than shorter spins.

Carlinford Marathon Route

The course was pretty cool with a figure of eight shape course, but as you can see below there was one large climb to start with followed by 5 short sharp climbs and some deadly single track. Out of the whole course there was 31km of single track and 11km of road and fire road, defiantly not something you would get on every spin.

Elevation Profile

Carlingford Marathon KML

Lost Glove

(The gloves to the left are not the gloves I am talking about)

Before the trans wales I went out and spent
a fair amount of money on some new gloves. I used them once and then the next day one of them went missing, I looked everywhere but it was not to be found. Since then I have moved house and a lot of stuff has gone missing in action but some how the missing glove has turned up on the washing rack 2 months later…

Answers on a post card to where it went?

How I feel today!

I did my first lunch time training session in the pool today, a nice enough pool with about 5 people in it for a lunch time session so no one getting in each others way. I have never been that good at front crawl so I set my target of non stop 2 length breast stroke alternated with 2 lengths of front crawl. I managed half an hour of this with only one short stop and felt really good after.

Once I got back to work it began to hit me how knackered I was from doing it. It started with just feeling a bit tired to my whole body feeling like I had cycled 80km off road for the first time. I did not think such a short session could have such an effect but then I suppose looking at it I have not been in the pool for a while so it takes a while for the muscles and body to adjust.

After work I cycled the 15km home and here I sit unable to move and having had to cancel playing tag rugby. The good thing from this is that I know if I keep at it the three sessions I am planning to do a week will really begin to have an effect on my fitness and training levels….

White Tiger Swimming

Every day I sit at work at lunch and feel like I am wasting my lunch break surfing facebook or some other random site to pass the time or I just carry on with my work. Yesterday I drove into Dublin along the Navan road to discover that 300m up the road from work there is a swimming pool.

I walked down there today to and spoke to the front desk and they do lunch time sessions and even better there was only one person in the pool.  So I am now going to try and swim two or three times a week to build up the fitness and stop surfing pointless web sites. So tomorrow is wednesday and I will aim to go friday as well and then on monday and they can be my three swimming training days.

Single Speed Riding

I came back from the trans wales with an idea for an irish single speed national championships and thought that maybe with a little work we might get some intrest and be able to run one next year.  After a phone call with some lads from Galway we manged to get an event this year on Saturday 18th October.

Check out http://www.singlespeedireland.com/ for more details.