Had the joy of a couple of spells of crashing on the bike over the last few months ruining my new winter kit, that I brought through sponsorship and the shifters on my road bike, which has been very costly! Silver lining although very upset at the costs which are spiralling (who ever said you don't have to spend much to train/race was lying!!!) at least I wasn't injured, apart from gravel rash and then gravel rash ontop of the gravel rash I already had on the hip!
My sponsors have continued to be brilliant at helping me out and am so very grateful for that, it's a struggle some times to even find enough money for food and I couldn't even afford to train let alone race without them..... So thank you:)
The financial constraints have hit again as I'm still struggling to find full time work so had to drop out of considering York as my first lot of paracycle races. Instead I raced a local Time Trial yesterday as it was 5 minutes down the road from me and also the longest TT I have done to date at 30 miles. It went okay although it didn't really show the kind of improvements my testing form over the winter was pointing to. I was hoping to hold the same average speed that I did on the 25 mile last year on the same roads, as my improvements pointed towards me being able to do it. Weather conditions wouldn't have helped yesterday because the swirling wind meant that you got tail, head and side winds without changing direction. It was going well initially holding 40kmh, which was above my targets with relatively low power and heart rate but then got off the nice new tarmac onto the old surface and it just beat me. I ended up averaging about 37.8kmh which is over a kmh slower than I had targeted. First race Time Trial of the year and the lack of race fitness is evident. I'v trained and tested so hard over the winter and made big improvements but its not racing. I can take the positive I suppose that although I was down on my 25 from last year, I was about 2kmh average quicker yesterday than when I raced a 16 at the BC championships:)
Need to race importantly, keep turning the screw though and step it up!
