Planning my year

Posted by Mark on February 16, 2011 under racing | Read the First Comment

I started last year with rubbish form, mostly due to being rather lazy during the [harsh] winter of 2009/2010. This set back plans I had of racing a lot – the main aim being ‘achieve 2nd cat‘.

By the summer my form was storming [for me]. Three weeks cycling at altitude in Peru probably helped a bit; but none the less I figured if I could hang onto a good portion of that form through the winter I’d be in great shape to start this year.

So the plans started to enter my head.

1) Race. Aim for second cat licence.

2) Do a Gran Fondo or two – quite fancy doing some Italian hills

At the end of last year I booked the first of two Gran Fondo – the Nove Colli. 205km and 3,840m of climbing. Then in January I booked the second, to follow the Nove Colli by only four weeks – The Gran Fondo Sportful. This is a beast, 212km and 5,300m of ascent!

Then things started to go a bit wrong. I got a cold in December. Just as I’d got over it, I did a 130km road ride, and within two days was ill again. This time it turned nasty – sparing the details I shed 2kg in the space of a few hours. The worst of this was over in a day, but for the following week my digestion was off and I was pretty weak. 10 days after the start of it I was vomiting again. It was another 10 days before I could ride again.

And ride I did. Having missed out on most of December I cracked on with the distances, keeping the effort much steadier than at the peak of my form last year, with a few hard efforts on some climbs. I found that I was shattered after only 100km, which was pretty rubbish – but, I knew form would return.

Then two weeks ago I got another cold. It was only in my head, so I did a steady[ish] MTB ride. The cold turned nasty and went to my chest, I’ve been coughing for a week now.

It’s been seven days since I last went on a bike, and I can’t remember when I last had an alcoholic drink. I think it was eight or nine days ago. This time I’m determined not to give my body any extra stress to deal with, and to just get this chest cold out of the way. It’s rest, rest, rest until I’m a couple of days clear of the symptoms, and even then I plan to ride really steadily. This has totally wrecked my plans to start racing next month, there’s not a chance of that happening. I’m even starting to worry about the GFs – and a planned 180km ride in April! At least with that one it’s relatively flat and I’ll be with a group of friends, so I can feel a gratuitous amount of wheel sucking coming on.

Swapped a couple of texts with a mate this morning:

“Is it a persistent cough?”

“Yeah”, says me.

“It’s going around. I’ve heard it takes six weeks to get over”

Brilliant. I might as well aim to have form for the CX season.