37 days and counting.

From today I have 37 days until I ride the Vaujany Master - the number of training days is much less at 20 days.

The reason for the difference is we already had 11 nights in Spain booked before entering the Vaujany and obviously there are a number of days lost due to travelling to France. In Spain I'm intending to have 6 days were I don't think about the bike or training and even have a few drinks (not touched a drop this year yet), but I'll be eating sensibly and keeping to a more protein based diet but obviously I'll avoid Spanish steaks just in case I need a dope test!!! The rest of the time in Spain I'll be doing some gentle training more to maintain my fitness than anything else. Once I get home I'll have three days before we set off for France via Poole so I intend to do a long ride on the Sunday and then two days of recovery riding before heading off.

So how have things been going since my last post?

Well I'm now under 15 stone and enjoying the benefits of a lighter frame both on and off the bike.

I've been buying new clothes for Spain as the ones I had for my last trip out there in September are way too big - no more X's on my shorts now and I'm hoping I'll need another shopping spree before Turkey in September to buy some medium shorts. I've also been able to buy fitted shirts from H&M and am amazed by how good I look in them compared to the baggy clothes that I've been hiding in.

On the bike the weight loss has made a huge difference to my climbing especially. I'm riding up climbs I used to try and avoid all costs for fun these days, I'm even starting to enjoy climbing to some extent. My fitness is also amazing me as my recovery from hard efforts is so much quicker than before but the down side to that is that I have to dig way deeper on the harder efforts now to get the work out - dizziness and feeling sick have become my friend.

Last Sunday I rode the Wight Riveria Sportive which at 169km with 2200m of climbing is the hardest ride I've done since returning to cycling. I have to be honest in that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I was really surprised to be overtaking other cyclists on some of the climbs who had the appearance of being more suited to climbing than me. Even though I had some legs soreness the following two days it was nowhere near what I used to suffer from and after 48 hours had settled right down.

I'm confident with the distance of Vaujany now but the great unknown is still the climbing so I'm going to be concentrating on this in the remaining training days I have. The climbs out there are much longer than what I have to train on so I have to work extra hard on the hills available to me.

Finally I've made some changes to the bike by fitting the SRAM Climbers Kit. This means that I have a 34x32 bottom gear now so can use this to keep my legs spinning rather than trying to push a big gear. I did notice on the Isle of Wight that by using this gear I can keep my heart rate really low.

I'll try and keep the blog updated more often as we get nearer the day.