Training has been progressing nicely over the last couple of weeks. Above is a graph of my weekly cycling hours since September and I’m pretty happy with the results. I’ve been consistently above about 4.5hrs for the last few weeks and am feeling good on the bike, ready to step things up a notch in December.

I went down to Canberra at the weekend to visit John and brought my bike, intending to do a ride in the hills on Saturday morning. I had a couple of Guinness on Friday evening, but was still home at a reasonable hour, so made it out on the bike at 6:30am. Unfortunately, on the climb out of Coppins Crossing, a short pitch of about 8%, I felt terrible. My HR was through the roof, I felt exhausted and knew instantly that there was no way I was doing the planned 80km hilly ride.

I thought that maybe having beers the night before was the problem and was a bit pissed off that I’d wasted the opportunity for a hilly ride, but it wasn’t until I got back up to Sydney yesterday that I remembered that I’d donated blood on Thursday evening! No wonder I was wrecked, I was missing 10% of my blood, meaning there was 10% less red blood cells to carry oxygen to my muscles. Blood doping in reverse! So, that’s the reason for my paltry 2:41 this week!

My weight has stabilised at a little under 88kg, down from just over 93kg in September. I’m off any diet for the moment, and the plan is to keep my weight at this level until January, then to drop another couple of kilos to get me into the low 80s. I’ve committed to Alpine cycling in June, and the less there is of me, the easier it will be to get up climbs like Alpe d’Huez:

The target is to get to around 80kg or under by June, which shouldn’t be too hard to do if I can stay motivated to keep my cycling hours up for the next six months.

Totals

Nov.29: R 0:20 - C 2:41 - W 0:00
Nov.22: R 0:00 - C 5:05 - W 0:00
Nov.15: R 0:23 - C 4:40 - W 0:00