"to push ones limits one must first find his limits"

first round of the ABC winter series today ....big turn out ... 5 of the hardcore

in an effort not to take the race seriously and get some training benifit out of it i chose to ride out from arbroath to glamis station woods which is about 35k on the road using the heckler . Combination of Sonic boom six gig and my mates ensured a late night prior to this. So leaving my self only 1.5 hours to get there things were a bit pressed for time.

got there just on time , and started off with an easy start in second for the first singletrack where a stick went through my rear mech !!. stopped progress for a little while . removed it and dropped to the rear of the pack. Got stuck for that section of singletrack nitemare !

over took 4th place on a steep descent and then pushed hard to catch up with the main pack of three

caught up , 2nd place slipped on a root on a climb and dropped behind me , 3rd place let me past after some pressure so i ended up in second before midway round the first lap.1st place had a similar fate to my self involving a stick in the wheel so i over took him , and seemed to cruise off into the lead and managed to open up a good 2min lead.

kept it up till the 4th lap where i blew up on an early climb and the pace dropped from 20-25kph to 15-20kph , this allowed second place to catch me. had nothing left to give and just limped home for second place.

lessons learnt ...dont do 60k on 2 bananas for breakfast

quick cheese ploughmans and another 35 k ride home

Good training though

it has been suggested im going to hard at this training malarky after doing spin sessions at the local gym in favour of turbo training and doing 185-195 bpm HR for the whole session twice a week but i think thats because im out of sync with my mates training schedules. they are aiming to peak for june and im aiming to peak in february/early march ....then i can have a month off training hard to study for my finals and then start the training again

Certainly been seeing alot of stars in my training sessions recently ... but coupled with some good long rides though