Post Haute Route, the come down....
So, it has been a week since my three week adventure came to an end. You may think it would take a while to get back into normal life, well yes it may be tricky if I had a normal life/job to go back to. I’m pleased to say I do not have a set job so I had tuesday set aside for doing nothing. I soon burnt the whole day away with cups of tea, old repeats of Top Gear, a few bowls of my fav food porridge, a little bit of the tour of britain and La Vuelta as a dessert. Immediately back into my daily routine. It was as though I had not even been away. I did have the soreness of the misery knee as a reminder of what I had been up to, and a couple of loads of washing to get through. The washing dealt with in the adverts. The knee getting very slowly dealt with by a cocktail of ibru’s and regular icings.
For many years I have always had a “challenge” of some sort on the horizon, even when I was training/racing in the single scull I would have something else planned for after whatever event I was aiming to do. Never do I seem to be where I am now, with nothing on the horizon, no particular target, no aim. It is a strange feeling, but I decided to have it this way months ago. I wanted to actually have some time off. Time to try to switch off, decide whats next.
For the first few days back in sunny UK I did not feel so physically tired but mentally shattered, the focus of being in a race every day having taken its toll. Come Wednesday and I was feeling heavy legs. As much as when your doing these races you only really have racing the stage on your list of jobs for the day, but you somehow seem to be busy every day. In my obsessive way I would spent a couple of hours in the evening reading the next stage, looking at the profile. Trying to find out where it would be good to have a group to ride with, where the descents were possibly a bit fruity. I do not like to do the stages and suddenly be surprised by anything I have not looked up. I also search on Strava the exact gradient of the climbs, where it gets steeper so I know where people will be hitting the climb harder to make selection. With that job, the massage, eating after the race, going back to the hotel. Then eating again, getting the briefing from Roy and Darrell, before you know it the day has gone and its 21:00, time to start getting ready for bed! So looking back I can see why I was mentally tired.
Its now sunday morning and I am feeling alright, I have spent the last two day looking into what I do next year, this time last year I immediately thought I would have to do the race again as I thought I still had more to offer. I am now getting that feeling, I honestly believe I did as well as I could over the three weeks, but with another year, yes I can make a load of improvements.
This years tick box targets were:
Do not fall off, done.
Finish top of the three week race, done.
Finish in the top ten of each seven day race, done.
Try to pick up a/some podium finishes, done.
All of those were realised, now to improve this again. Raise the bar I guess you could say.
The top two things I need to address, descending and weight management. The descending I have been told getting onto a mountain bike will help a lot, learn how to handle a bike when its always moving about under you. Secondly the weight, I seem to be able to get down to the target weight without too much effort. The issue I seem to have is staying there, you always put on weight pre event as your body is packing in glycogen which weighs a lot. Shockingly though, I left the UK at around 65kg, I returned near enough 70kg. I am sure most people who did the race would have lost weight, not me. When you climb a hill there are two very important numbers you look at. Your weight, which is your body weight plus your bike, and the power you are producing. There is no way around these facts as gravity is pretty dam constant. Yes, you can draft the rider in front of you, this helps the faster you go. On the steeper climbs the power to weight is even more important, drafting has very little importance. So if I continue to be heavy I must improve my power hugely, this can only be upper by a small amount in twelve month so weight management is clearly very important.
The knee of doom has started to show signs of improvement in the last couple of days, swelling has gone down though it still feels sore when climbing and descending stairs. I am hoping to have it right ready for October when I want to restart training in France with my Azur Cycle Tour friend Justin.
I am proud and pleased with how I performed over the three weeks. Also very happy that I was able to not only get through the stages but get through them racing pretty much all the way from Venice to Anglet, and pleased with the way I held the same form through to the Pyrenees. There were of course some dark times, some miserable time (mostly temperature and rain related), but these times were few and far between. They were very occasional, in the most you are enjoying the suffering of climbing (sometimes climbing well), the views when you look up from the suffering. The good people I met on my travels.
All that is now behind me and in the past, I am looking forward to getting my teeth into another year of tough training, learn from this years errors and add some new skills to my riding and of course more power.
I will still be Blogging, but less regularly. My standard week is way less interesting than a week in the Haute Route racing every day. I will try to add some of my training, include how numbers are progressing and next years targets as soon as I am sure of what I am doing.
Thanks for reading.
