Any regular readers out there I apologise for flooding this blog but it’s rather like therapy for me to write about how my training is going. Reminds me of the days when I used to keep a diary.

Last night my sleep was massively disrupted as my legs ached so much. To the point I don’t think I’d have ridden today if I hadn’t agreed to meet Jo. I’m glad I went. My plan was to just ride steady and do our training loop the opposite direction to Jo to keep an eye on her. After about 30 minutes I felt pretty good so when Jo started her 20 minutes pieces above IM pace I tagged along and just kept her within about 20m. This was about IM effort for me. I did two of these before we got to the start of the loop. I then got focussed on my average speed and was determined to get it to 16.7mph before I got to the little shop where I was going to grab breakfast. This resulted in a 55 minute push at above IM effort. Following some peanuts I met up with Jo and cycled with her back to Epping before continuing on. I then did a pyramid set of 1min fast / 5 recovery, 2 fast / 4, 3 / 3, 4/2, 5/1, 4/2, 3/3, 2/4, 1/5. Each fast bit was best effort for that time period. Went really well. Ended ride with 121 miles in 7 hours and managed to do a fast 20 minute run off the bike. Really pleased, been a long time since decent back to back long rides. Managed longer but don’t think I’ve managed to consecutive rides at that sort of intensity.

So despite it being a week of far less volume the quality of my training this week has been excellent.

People are so friendly towards cyclists. Often seems to be old fellas that used to cycle but now ‘just don’t have the time’ – it’s ashame they can’t get out. Today was top quality for chats. When I stopped first I got chatting to a guy who was keen on road racing. Then whilst fixing Jo’s puncture we got chatting with a guy that used to Time Trial. Finally when I had some lunch after my pyramid got chatting with guy that used to cycle lots round this area. Turns out he was a captain in the merchant navy. I could have chatted with him for ages. He seems pretty pleased when I said I always thought of that job as being really romantic. He said it was !

All in  all an excellent day.