This festive period has been great fun, training eating and enjoying time off with friends, family and of course my amazing girlfriend. I have been training harder than ever and everything went to plan. It was important for myself to make sure that I made the most of my time away from the stresses of work, and get the most I could out of training. I put together a hard cycling training plan, but also made sure I kept critical running and strength training in there too. But the main objective was to get the most out of having the extra time on the bike. Lots of time was spend cycling, but also the time had to be optimized to enjoy it and make sure there was time for coffee stops,after sessions were completed of course!
Training and having a structure allows you to not ponder on what has or could have been, its a fantastic way to not get stuck and to always look into the future; towards the next session or on-wards to the next race. January blues is never an issue because there are so many other things that need to be considered because this is an important training period.
On a whole the festive break was a very successful one and the training I banked will hopefully have put some strong foundations in place to build on as I now set my sights on the World Duathlon Qualifiers in March.
The Worcester XC County Championships is always a great race to do because it is always very competitive. Everyone wants to do well, it may be that they want to make sure they have bragging rights in the club house or even to qualify for for inter counties (which was my personal aim). Pre race as always I was not feeling very rested at all, I had been training hard over the festive period and was not feeling like it would be a successful day, although I was wrong. The conditions were quite simply wet and very very muddy!
The race began fast and uphill, im not the best climber at all and this was a course for people who could climb, lots of short sharp hills and favored the light and nimble runner. I started off slowly and warmed into the race, this was the tactic before hand as it looked like it was going to be a tough course. I concentrated on my pacing and not others and it proved to be the correct thing to do. I had a very solid and muddy race and finished 6th in the county, winning myself a place in the county team and a chance to race at the National inter-county race. This I was very happy about!
Overall it was a solid race, and forgot to mention the fall on the second lap.......very embarrassing, resulting in me becoming very muddy!
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