NO LOVE HANDLES ALLOWED!

'It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.' Theodore Roosevelt 23 April 1910

Saturday, 9 January 2010

You Can't Hide From The Truth

Whether you think you've been good and have kept your training ticking over since the end of last season there is only one way to find out the truth, and that is to test yourself, push yourself to your limit and see where that limit is compared to where you were at the end of 2009.

So today I hit the turbo for one of the hardest sessions - the 40km turbo TT. The turbo race of truth. So lets set the scene, my best in 2009 was 50.33 and I reckon I need to improve by 7% in 2010 to hit my Barcelona target, so this needs to drop to 47 minutes - eek, just typing that hurts.

Lets cut to the chase, today I managed 1.01.34. And it hurt. A lot. But, I now have a marker in the sand and this session will be my standard Saturday morning ride on the turbo. I am also enthused by the fact that in 2009 I made significant improvements during my base phase just by simply riding the bike. So here's looking forward to seeing this time reduce in the weeks and months ahead.

2 comments:

Mark "Frank" Whittle said...

You're spot on mate, it's all about marker down a marker at this stage, that time will come tumbling down in no time. It's not nice to see those "slow" times, but they won't be "slow" for long!

Sags said...

Well done mate. I know how hard that type of session is, no matter what shape you are in! We just can't remain in shape all year - I tried last year!