Christmas and New Year.

Christmas and new year.

The festive time is nearing its end, was it a white Christmas.... Well not where I have been. It has been a good time for me, not due to Christmas itself (not really my thing), but due to the rather rare weather we been having. Training has been good during what is usually 90% internal training. I have had many rides over 3hrs outside and even been hot at times.

Christmas itself was its usual quiet self but a nice time. I am not religious, but this time of year is a good excuse to spend time with the family. As per usual I started and finished my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, completely the opposite to my Mum who has most of it done weeks in advance. I tend to find it nice and quiet in the afternoon of Christmas Eve. All my presents brought and wrapped (the wrapping takes longer than the buying). I settled down to sleep by 10 oclock.

I had a deadline on Christmas day morning of being ready and dressed up by 10am, so the maths tells you my alarm call for training was going to be early.... 5:30 to be exact. Breakfast (porridge of course), 2 cups of tea and I was off out rolling by 06:40. My 2 favorite days for riding in the UK are Christmas day morning and New years day morning, both for the peace and freedom that empty roads bring to you with everyone with a brain cell wrapped up in bed. This year limited time I decided on a tough (ish) session, 2 x 20-30min efforts. Both sweetspot power. Stupidly, I ended up doing 3 efforts of varying time, totaling 76 minutes. Looking back, this is probably why I have not been able to do any real training since then... Foolish idiot I am.

As much as I would have loved to have been out doing long rides while the weather has been decent, I take the small positive out of being ill. That positive has been to fully recharge my bodies batteries more than the usual one day off a week does. It has also forced me to maybe try to go a bit more careful on the intensities and regularity of the harder sessions. When you are ill or injured you try to look at reason why this has happened, proper recovery rides I think could help me, when I ride hard one day, the next day really should be a recovery ride. Looking back over the last 3-4 weeks, I think I could have loaded the tough sessions a bit too much. Then rode upper zone 2 for 2-4 hrs instead of lower zone 2 or even upper zone 1 for 2 hrs. So lesson learnt, they say ever day is a learning day eh.

“Less is more” is going to be something to take into the new year.

Hope you all had a good festive period and a Happy new year to you.