third time lucky?

hello, from a very summery Brittany!

In a spell of ridiculously unseasonal weather a storm has been raging! Ok slight exageration, but thinks havent been going anywhere near as smoothly as the weather!


This is mainly due to a couple of factors, firstly the injury. Now pretty much undercontrol. It has taken a while but have found the source of the problem to be the glutes (lots of rolling around on a foam roller,stretching and doing strange, unsightly things with a tennis ball has seemed to improve the situation) With this now undercontrol I did though miss a weekends racing. No problem I thought Fleche Locmine Elite National last Sunday would get me back into the swing of things...how wrong was I!?

Sunday and arriving for another big race, keen to get stuck in and test the leg and get back to some hardcore racing. Not much point giving to much background info on this just a couple of factor's that ruined the day really.

Firstly for some reason this was the only race we didnt have a team car in the convoy at and secondly there is no literal translation for "pace me back on".

So if you haven't already guessed a mere 15 minutes into the race I hit a massive hole and punctured. Not panicking, thinking there was neutral service, I raised my arm and rolled to the back of the bunch. How wrong was I soon the convoy were speeding past as was the broom wagon! Where's my wheel!? Then out of the blue a car did stop, a good two minute wait, threw me a wheel took mine and sped off! So with no one to pace me back on the bunch moving at 30+ mph my race was over before it even begun. Annoyed was an understatement.


Not wanting to waste the day completely I headed back to the start, picked up a long sleeve and leg warmers and headed off for a three and a half hour hack instead. Not ideal but better than moping about.


So with Sunday a washout it did mean I was able to train  properly Monday. Quite worried now about the lack of speed in my legs (due to two weeks raceless) I did a couple of hours steady then headed out for some motor pacing behind the car with Tony. If you don't know motorpacing is basically recreating the speed of the race in a controlled fashion, speed you can't create by yourself that easily.

So a couple of inches from the bumper we flew up and down the nice straight 7km road. Four loops and with speeds of 49mph one way (ran out of gears!) and 42mph into the headwind the other I can happily say I got an hour of speed in my legs! A good days training and three hours on the clock.


Tuesday, Warm, windy sprints, Lovely. 10 sprints and a spin afterwards. My sprintings improving as is my lunging for shadows on the road! two blustery hours done.

Wednesday group ride and an easy one! No one very keen to push on today. With beautiful sunny skies and 26 degrees it didn't really matter, 140km of cruising with last 15km a bit more tempo. Feeling pretty tired after a solid block of intense training an easy few days coming up before race on Sunday!

So a good four day block of training done, not ideal as would have rather raced, but guess did all I could with a tricky situation. So third time lucky? A more low key race this Sunday followed hopefully by another big Elite one on Wednesday. After the last couple of weeks I am feeling stronger than ever before, due to great training, but am also aware I haven't had a block of racing. So for the next couple of races the aim is to mix it up and see!


Fingers crossed, no punctures, mechanicals or anything else to get in the way!