I've had a great start to July - a week off work to have some time at home during the school holidays, which has been great fun. Plus perfectly timed to match in with some late nights watching the Tour de France.
The bike has been left in the garage for the week while I slept in each morning after my late-night TdF watching, and my days were taken up with family day trips. Not ideal for race prep, but perfect for mentally rejuvenating family time.
Sadly back at work now, and so no more rest for the wicked! Before we get too deep into July, here is a quick review of how I went in June...
January - 300km / 13hrs
February - 452km / 20hrs
March - 341km / 20hrs
April - 269km / 12hrs
May - 201km / 10hrs
June - 437km / 21hrs
Year to date - 2000km / 96hrs
Finally some signs of consistency. I only missed one week due to rainy weather, and a few small runs of days due to a new role at work. Very happy to log my biggest month of the year in terms of 'hours on the bike', and my 2nd biggest in terms of mileage.
Probably the best news (in a weird way) is that I could very easily have done a lot more. I allowed myself a few indulgent sleep-ins on the weekends, for-going a lot of bike time. So I'm super-confident of being able to keep the momentum going and building further and longer for July.
Six Months Down, Six Months To Go
A nice round figure for the first half of the year - 2000km (and 96 hours). Not enough there to be a solid "Masters C" competitor in Open Racing, but at the very least a basis to build on.
My modest aims for the 2nd half of the year is to increase that by 50% - so knock out another 3000km and 150 hrs by the end of the year. In simple terms, that's only a consistent 500km a month. And a very modest 100-150km per week.
My very basic plan is to be on the bike for 3 weekdays every week - which'll be 3 days of commuting with some extra mileage or intensity thrown in on 1-2 of those days. That alone will carry me over 100km. On top of that, at least one weekend ride as well - either a race or a long bunch ride.
That basic week-long structure will give me 150-200km every week. If I can hit that most weeks, I should see some solid improvement all-round.
What's Coming Up
I've mentioned it before, but looming large ahead is the Cunningham Classic - a 96km hilly road race on the 3rd August. My initial plan was to build to this as my A-Race for the year, and give myself a short one-week taper leading in to the event.
Since then, I've started looking closely at the Charles Coin Memorial road race, being raced two weeks later on the 18th August. Based at Mulgowie (near South Laidley), it is run on an 18km country road circuit. My grade - Masters C - will do 4 laps, or 72km (other grades do more laps for a greater distance, with Elite A racing furthest at 7 laps/126km).
I'm thinking that the Charles Coin race will be more suited to me. So I'm going to treat the Cunningham Classic as a hard training day, and not alter my training volume/intensity around it. Instead, I'll taper in to the Charles Coin as my A-Race for the year.
Once those races are done, the rest of the year will be all about criterium racing. I might make some changes to my training focus for that, but there is no need to consider that until after the two big August road races.
Plenty of work to do now for a big 6-week build into the Charles Coin Memorial. With a bit of luck, I'll reach it with plenty of mileage in my legs to give myself every chance of finishing with the main peloton...!!
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