oxfordsportive

I have tried doing intervals over the past few years without much success. The pattern is to occasionally have one good session and get fired up with enthusiasm then hacking it in after twenty minutes at the next session. However after reading the Time Crunched Cyclist by Chris Carmichael and trying the sessions he suggested plus finding various tips online I have managed to find a method that works pretty well.

Mix an energy drink and sip that while you get ready, this raises the blood sugar levels and will make you more inclined to keep going, this is a tip from Chris Carmichael and basically he is saying give yourself plenty of chances to succeed. Also make sure before starting that your mp3 player, bike computer are charged and ready to go.
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Since posting about having a cold ten days ago things have gone from bad to worse. I felt better after taking a week off the bike as a consequence of having a bad cold, so started training hard to make up for lost time. This included interval sessions on the turbo and riding outside in pretty cold and wet weather.

Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened next, I came in from a turbo session last Thursday feeling chilled and woke up on Friday with a streaming nose that just wouldn’t stop. As luck would have it I had to commute into London by train, must have used a box of tissues each way, lots of dirty looks from my fellow commuters saying why don’t you stay at home and not spread the virus about?

I then compounded my errors by attempting to go out on Saturday but didn’t get very far, then spent the rest of the weekend feeling awful.

The only way to get better is to get plenty of rest, sleep and keep warm, just been reading a post on BikeRadar where some  recommend taking two weeks out in which to get better, maybe that is excessive but rushing back to full on before you’re better seems like a big mistake, better to take time off then ease back gently into training.

I guess I’m not the only one to feel like the start to the year has been much of a dead loss from a training point of view, snow and plunging temperatures have meant little cycling has been done and a new bike is still there un-ridden inside the house after three months or so.

Lemsip Max

So when the weather improved it was all systems go, intervals during the week and long rides at the weekend and lots of plans and then bang, a really sore throat for several days followed by a bad cold all of which has meant another week off the bike.

Have I been a wimp for not training through the cold?

The cold wasn’t below the neck so in theory I  could carry on and don’t need to stop training. But I did feel pretty under the weather (so to speak) and with no real desire to do anything more energetic than stir a spoonful of honey into a max-strength Lemsip

Now ten days later I am starting to feel better but still feeling sorry for myself, but then I thought get real man, there are people out there with broken bones and serious injuries who have to take months if not years off the bike and they don’t complain. A week or ten days off should make you keen and happy to get back to the bike, and at my level it won’t make much difference!