Due to a number of boring logistical and knee/ankle/hip-related reasons the Pyrennean coast-to-coast ride that I was planning for this June has been postponed until…some other time (maybe next year)
Category / Atlantic-Med C2C
2012 training – week 2 (w/c 9th Jan)
Work , more punctures and insomnia combined for a bit of a weird week.
Monday
- Cycle to/from work (10 miles)
- Free weights (circuits)
- 4 mile easy run (9 min miles)
Tuesday
- Cycle to/from work (10 miles)
- Gym (20 mins bike – intervals, 1 hour treadmill – 45 mins @ 13 km/h then intervals)
Wednesday
- Cycle to work (5 miles)
- Free weights (circuits)
Thursday
- Cycle from work (5 miles)
Friday
- Cycle to/from work (10 miles)
Saturday
- Cycle to/from gym (10 miles)
- Gym (1 hour treadmill – 30 mins @ 13 km/h then 30 mins intervals)
Sunday
- Nothing because I, as a sign of my age, have hurt my hip. GREAT
Cycling mileage: 50 miles
2012 training – week 1 (w/c 2nd Jan)
Right, happy new year, hello 2012 etc. In May I am running the Belfast marathon. In June I am cycling through the Pyrenees. Inexplicably I have once again scheduled to do a long bike ride and a marathon within a month of each other (last year I did the Edinburgh marathon 3 weeks after finishing the end to end). To try and avoid feeling as awful as I did after the end-to-end I am going to try and get in the best shape possible.
So.
I’m going to do a weekly training diary between now and the summer. Hopefully it’ll end up being part diary, part forces-me-to-do-stuff-so-i-don’t-look-lazy and part it-might-be-useful-to-someone (and also, hopefully, not too boring).
Monday
Sometimes (read: a lot of the time) I have a complete mental block with the gym, it’s not like running or cycling outside, it’s too easy to stop, finish early and go home. Today was one of those days.
The cycle home was impossibly difficult, I thought I must’ve forgotten to eat or the very short gym-ness had taken more out of me than should be possible, however I got home and on closer inspection realised that the huge amount of mud and road-gunk encasing my rear brake (due to my lack of mudguards) meant that it had locked itself ‘on’. So I had cycled home, all the way, with the brake on. Brilliant.
- Cycle to/from the gym: total 10(ish) miles
- Gym
- Warmup (stretching, 10 mins on cross-trainer)
- Treadmill: 30mins at 13 km/h
Tuesday
On the way back from work I hit an enormous pothole (Abbey Road, near the junction with Hawksworth Road if anyone cares), the impact was horrible and by the time I got home my front tyre was a soggy mess, the inner tube had been completely annihilated by the bump. Got incredibly dirty changing the tube, I really need to clean my bike.
- Cycle to/from work: total 10(ish) miles
- Free weights (circuits)
Wednesday
Cleaned my bike, got incredibly filthy doing so.
- Free weights (circuits)
Thursday
Biblical amounts of rain and standing water, I should invest in some overshoes so my shoes fill up with water slightly slower.
- Cycle to/from work: total 10(ish) miles
- 4 mile tempo run (7-min miles)
- Free weights (circuits)
Friday
- Cycle to/from work: total 10(ish) miles
Saturday
In hilariously windy conditions I actually got blown sideways, which was simultaneously fun and weird.
- 10 mile easy run (9-min miles)
- Free weights (circuits)
Sunday
- 45 mins turbo trainer
Oh and every week I’m going to total my cycling mileage because…it’s good to have stats. And really, to be ready to cycle in the Pyrenees I need to be up to over 100-150 miles a week by May. This week = 40 miles
Pyrenean coast to coast
So, planning has progressed slightly. The whole Atlantic-Med ride will start on 7th June next year and should take a week.
The route will start in Biarritz and finish in Argeles sur Mer. Along the way we will climb, amongst others, the Aubisque and the Tourmalet (both of which I think feature in the Tour de France next year) which look like this:
On to the next stupid idea
After the ride this year I really want to do something similar next year, after a good deal of the last 3 weeks spent watching the tour de france I have decided to do a ride from the Atlantic coast (roughly near Biarritz) to somewhere just south of Perpignon on the Med. In doing so I plan to take in quite a few of the larger mountains in the Pyrenees.
The route profile will look something like this http://www.pyractif.com/cycling-packages/road-c2c-classic.html
And the incredibly detailed routemap currently looks like this: