Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Good Friday and training camp


And so it begins another race season with the Hamilton Cycling Club Good Friday Road race this coming Friday.  I truly cannot believe it’s already here.  This winter has been an unusual winter for training.  I have been able to get outside most weekends for my long rides and only having to train indoors during the week after work because of the light factor.  Since I have been able to put in the time outside and I won’t have to go through the normal get to know my bike again outside aka balance and placement on the road.  To help my balance on the bike this winter I added rollers to my training.  At first it was a shear battle of wits of saying to myself that they were not going to beat me that I have to figure this out and I did.  I can drink out of my water bottle, take a jersey off if I need too, stand and ride no hands.  It’s the best feeling of conquering a fear of the rollers.  It just clicked one day and I was fine from there on in.

My outdoor season usually starts with a little bit of riding outside and then head down south for some warmer weather riding but this year I was able to go down south with a lot more mileage in my legs which was great.  I headed off to training camp down in my home away from home Rome Georgia.  I was there for only 10 days this year but put in some amazing time in the saddle.  The weather was cool to start with but much better than the previous weekend at home where the temps was only -5C and in GA the temp was about 10 or so C.  The camp spanned over 2 weekends with the first having a road race in Dalton, GA.  It was a great race to get my first race pre-race jitters out of the way.  The rest of the time was spent riding with different groups of people that I have ridden with before and then other days were spent riding with my husband and our friend, Stephan, who we stay with every year that we have been down well with him and his family.  This year the three of us went to Lookout Mtn and rode over it a couple of times now that was a fun warm day in the saddle.  Took in a nice total of 25hrs in the saddle in the south this year thankfully when we came back home we came home to warmer than normal weather thankfully to ride in.

So enough about the weather and lets get on with the race season.

Can't wait to see all my fellow racer friends this week.

Shell :-)