Season starter
I’ve sat down to write this blog 3 times now over the past week but failed on each occasion. Finally, sat down with a nice cup of tea and I’m ready to start rambling. I posted a bunch of pictures from the first rest day on our team training camp last week, so I’ll kick things off by talking about what I got up to in Lanzarote with Rapha Condor Sharp. There were a decent number of us involved the camp with 8 riders, John, Ken- one of our teams coaches, Andy- our soigneur, Pete- our mechanic and Camille- our team photographer from SHARP. Straight from the off everyone got on really well and conversation flowed easily from when we got up in the morning to when went to sleep at night. I think this transferred directly into how we rode as a team, even from our first ride together. It was made clear by John from the very start of the week that this camp was to be used to practice and hone our skills riding together properly as a team. There was no intent from anyone to try and prove themselves physically stronger or fitter than anyone else on the rides. If one of us was having a bad day, then the group would alter its pace to ensure that everyone was looked after. This mutual respect made performing and perfecting the technical aspect of our riding a lot easier. We did a series of sub-maximal efforts throughout the week including some through and off blocks and a few lead out sprints. Pretty much everything went to plan, which was surprising seeing as some of the things we were doing can be quite tricky whilst riding in the very strong winds Lanzarote is famous for. Saying that, I let the team down on one of the days… whilst sat on the back of the group I got blown off the road and then couldn’t hop back up again! Whilst it was happening I thought that it was crazy winds and I had a picture in my head of me leaning at 45 degrees, heroically managing to avoid crashing. However, to my disappointment Camille had everything on video. So after being shown it I was disappointed to see nothing crazy happens, it’s just clear that I’m just not very good at riding a bike. We had one other unfortunate moment at the beginning of the camp where Deano’s tyre blew out and sent him flying off the back of his bike! It was a fast stretch of road where we were riding at 50km/h but I think the unlucky Deano got off quite lucky in the circumstances, after only just recovering from an operation on his collar bone and somehow managing to avoid falling on his side and without landing in the endless amount of volcanic rock by the roadside- that stuff is lethal looking! Andy did a great job patching him up each day, but it still looked so painful. Climbing onto his bike each day with wounds the sides of dinner plates on both sides of his ass, made you think twice about complaining how your legs were a little bit tired! Overall, it was a great camp. Had a good laugh with everyone, felt good on the bike, enjoyed the sun and clocked up some good km’s in the process. I’ve been home now for 5 days and haven’t really been up too much. Took a few days off the bike and then started riding again a couple of days ago. As well as riding together well, we also looked the part (never sacrifice style for speed was mentioned a few times). We all had our matching custom Condor Leggero road bikes, our Rapha team kit and our brand new Giro gear- Aeon helmets and Prolight SLX road shoes - which are particularly nice, with Easton EC90 carbon soles and 3 Velcro straps, as I was really not a fan of the ratchets that continuously broke on the shoes I had last season! I’m at home now for a couple of weeks before heading off to Benidorm for our second training camp in early February. I am expecting this camp to be entirely different to the one he had in Lanzarote. Although I’m sure we’ll still be working on the technical stuff, the main objective of the camp is get physically ready for the racing season, which starts a few days after arriving back. I think this one is going to be a bit of a shock to the system and I reckon us younger guys will be doing a bit\a lot of suffering! Looking forward to it though. My racing programme kicks off with a TT and some road racing up in Manchester. I’m staying up with one of my team mates for the week, so it will us the opportunity to race together as a team for the first time. I then jet off to the Tour of Taiwan in mid-March. The race has upgraded to a UCI 2.1 – which is the highest category race I’ll have ever ridden. The race website mentions teams such as SaxoBank and Europcar could be riding. I’ll stop myself from rattling on now. Going to go indulge and have a Yakult. Thanks for reading, Felix |
|
I have been a bit lax on the blogging front over the past few weeks. I’ve been busy sorting things out with my new team Rapha Condor Sharp, and also getting some important base training done. I’ve been mainly tackling the cold and usually wet Sussex road by myself. I had a spell of 2-3 weeks where I was doing 4-5 hour spins on a regular basis. I backed off just before Christmas when I was starting to feel tired. I then had an easy week between Christmas and New Year to properly recharge the batteries before tackling the second and final part of the Winter.
Since going up to the Claremont hospital in Sheffield with the team I have found out that I am deficient in both Iron and Vitamin D. So I am now on the correct supplements to set this right – this highlights how important having a partner like Claremont is to the team. Even more so when one of my team mates broke his collar bone and he was able to be checked and have surgery within a week of the accident.
Christmas and New Year for me was very relaxed. I stayed at home and enjoyed some good food, some bad telly and some very steady road rides. I’ve also had Camille and Tom Southam – our team photographer and press officer– come down to the house for interviews and photographs. On a second visit I was chasing Camille on his motorbike (hooked up with cameras) around Beachy Head in horrific conditions. Again, the team have been so efficient getting all of this done already! Plus, the press/journalism side is something that also interests me quite a lot.
As I’m writing this I’m sat on a plane with my team mate Oliver Rossi flying over to Lanzarote for our first team training camp. The rest of the team would have already landed and probably won’t be far from the hotel at this point. I’ve been looking forward to this camp for a while and can’t wait to get out on the road with my new team mates. The Spanish sun and 22+ degrees temperature will also be a nice bonus. I’m not sure yet what the plan is training wise but I’ve heard mention of; race radios, lead out practice and coffee – so I’m a happy boy!
My first race with the team will be the Tour of Taiwan mid-March. The team’s position in the race was looking doubtful but we had a nice surprise a few weeks ago when we received an entry. After doing some research on the race and looking at picture from the past few years it looks like a pretty big event! It’ll be the biggest race I’ll have competed in anyway. There was a prologue TT last year – 2km = 1 lap of the crit course – but it appears to have been removed for this year’s edition, which is a bit of a disappointment, but then again I won’t be short of things to be thinking about with seven stages! There’s a good mix of hard hilly courses, a couple of sprint stages and a 60km crit on the final day. The team has had success in the past few years it has done it, so let’s hope we can replicate it this year.
In other English related news; I got to meet Edith Bowman from Radio 1 whilst we were both working at an event at the Olympic Velodrome! I even got my name mentioned on her next show – this had me very happy for a 24 hours! I also got to meet the ‘voice over guy’ from the X Factor, Pete Dickson. Family wise, my Sister finished her cross season on Saturday with take a top 10 in the national cross championships. She’s been training hard over the past months with the British Cycling Talent Team – there may be some conflicts this year in the household with myself riding for Ireland and my little Sister riding for GB. My Dad is in training for the Wicklow 200 this year. It’s a 200km sportif over some pretty savage terrain. All I know is my Dad was out on the bike this morning at 8am for a planned 100 mile spin!! At least there’s 1 athlete in the house…
I’ll leave it at that for now as my battery is starting to die, and I quite fancy shutting my eyes for 20 minutes before we land. I will do my best to do a couple of updates whilst I’m out in Lanzarote.
Thanks for reading, hope you had a good New Year,
Felix
|
I want to write about something slightly different to the kind of things I usually write about. So my topic today is – Advantages and disadvantages of being small in cycling. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly small at 175cm but compared to the majority of the guys I race against I am definitely on the smaller end of the scale. Being a smaller rider is often used as an excuse for being weaker than some of our larger counterparts. However, I don’t really agree. There are a few main points you will hear people come up with, why being small is an inconvenience in cycling. Firstly, and one which I can definitely relate to a certain extent is, trying to find a bike that fits you properly! This can definitely be a bit of inconvenience when you don’t fit between the standard 54-58cm frame size bracket. In my case, it’s not my height that causes a problem as I fit quite nicely on a 51-52cm bike, but it’s my body geometry. Inevitably passed down from both my parents, I have short legs and a long torso. This usually means a super small bike so I can get enough saddle height and then a nice long 14cm steam to allow for my overly long reach. However, once you have managed to hunt down a frame that’s small enough for you – I have seen a lot of people who have clearly given up on the search and ride bikes way too big for them – there are some definitely advantages to a small frame – it’s lighter and more compact which usually makes for a more responsive and stiffer machine. Secondly, a lot of people believe it can be hard to compete against the larger rider in TT’s and those horrible flat windy races. It’s true that to do well in these disciplines you need to be able to produce a lot of power and having the larger levers does usually help in this field. However, the fact you’re bigger means than you’re having to push more of that wind. This was one of my excuses when I taking a beating in past races, but it more came down to the fact that I wasn’t strong enough, or fit enough to compete with the other guys who had simply trained harder than me! So now I am training correctly, I think I should be a lot closer to these guys. Another aspect I’ve been looking into, to make those all important ‘marginal gains’ is aerodynamics whilst road racing. I’m experimenting with a few ideas, but the main and seemingly most obvious one to do was to cover the vents in my road helmet. The idea was stolen from my team mate Martyn Irvine, but after doing some research and seeing numbers and phrases such as ‘12% more efficient ‘ it seemed stupid that I’d never done it before. Especially after knowing an aero helmet over a regular road helmet in a TT is one of the biggest equipment gains you can make. After looking through my last 2 paragraphs of mindless ramblings, it appears I haven’t really made any proper points yet. So I’ll sum this post with a list of bullet points I have rattling round in my head about the advantages and disadvantages of being small- Disadvantages
Advantages
So to sum everything up, height doesn’t really make too much difference as long as you work on the aspects which will help you in those inevitable windy/TT/flat races. Basically, train hard and stay low and you’ll be fine. I hope. Gracias, Felix p.s not to be taken too seriously |
| My flight from Gatwick was simple and easy. A quick 2 hour flight and I through passport control and bags collected within the space of 20 minutes. Although it had clearly been raining in the morning, when I stepped out of the airport I was greeted with 22 degrees and sunshine. I took a taxi to the track to meet up with Andy and the other guys. We have a small training group here in Majorca - Sarah, Recep, Sofia and Martyn - and I got to watch a few of the guys suffer in one of Andy's stereotypical pain fests! It felt weird not being a part of the session and it did make me wish I was riding the track this Winter... but I need to concentrate on the road over the next few months and there was no way I could've bounced straight into a track season after a tough first year as an U23. We are staying in a different place this year - last year we were staying in Arenal on the South coast of the island - in a place called Alaro. A much smaller town, right on the edge of the big climbs. I'm living in a house with Martyn, Recep and Mutlu. It's a really nice house, which is fully kitted out for us. Downstairs we have a gym and a watt bike room, whilst upstairs we each get our own big rooms. I've taken a few photos but the quality on my camera is terrible! Most of the guys are on either rest days or short road spins today, so this morning I'm heading out with Martyn for a couple of hours and then I'll head off and do my own thing for a little while. |
| I'm back on the bike now after a week with not very much pedaling involved. I kick started my last training block of the season, with a TT training session involving two race pace efforts around a 9km circuit. These went well and I was pleased with the figures I was producing after such a relaxed 7 days. Here are the two Garmin files from my 2 race pace laps; I had planned a long steady ride for Tuesday, but I was very tired and it had appeared I had jumped into the intense TT training too early and that maybe a week was not enough rest to properly get over such an intense season of racing. I took the day off the bike and relaxed, trying to forget about how I was feeling - which isn't easy knowing you've got to race against the Worlds best riders in less than 4 weeks. Today I jumped on the TT bike again for a 2 hour spin. To my relief I was feeling fresh, strong and the fatigued feeling I had from the day before had completely gone. I finished off the ride by steadily pushing on and averaged over 40km/h for the last 16km. Here's the Garmin file from today's ride; I'm going to have another steady day tomorrow before racing this weekend in an open 10 mile TT on Saturday and an open 25 mile TT on Monday. The field for these races looks strong and it will give me a good chance to see where I am compared to some of the best TT'ers in the South. Notably, I am a seeded rider and with an extra note next to my name - 'one of the very few riders to ever beat Sir Chris Hoy'! It should be a fun weekend and I'm weirdly looking forward to the pain! The three pictures attached are of; my TT bike ready to race, my TT bike ready for training and a shot of me racing at this years Irish National TT Championships where I finished 2nd. Thanks for reading! Felix |
|