It’s that time of year again, cross is coming.
For me, it’s the usual conflict between structured organised training vs chaos of winter/autumn bugs and work travel. I managed to plan ahead this year, and did all required work travel by early September with the plan of having two clear weeks to train to peak. Unfortunately, I got off the plane and immediately caught a bug which mean zero training for over a week, sad times.
Before all that kicked off, in mid-summer I had decided to stop procrastinating and actually buy a turbo trainer. I’ve been considering getting one for years, and having had it for two months now I’m very happy with it. I’d expected that the main benefit was avoiding bad weather and darkness, but actually the quantified nature of indoor training has been very helpful for me too. My main weakness in cyclocross has always been in the road-y ability to deliver high watts for a long time, and so I’ve never done well at flat courses like Dig In. On the turbo trainer, it’s easy to do time-trial simulations, or over/under intervals, or stop-start sprints. All of which hopefully will pay dividends once the race season starts.
But, given that I’m still suffering somewhat from my autumn bug, I’m not sure if I’m going to make race #1 at Callendar Park right now. I cycled to work this morning for the first time in a while, and had to bail onto a shorter route. All this non-cycling has given me time to strip down, clean and rebuild my bike so it’s working better than new. But it would be very sad if I ended up with a shiny bike but lacking the health to race it. Lots of fruit, sleep and fingers crossed that the rest of the week goes better …