I had another crack at getting the me of 2012 to beat the me of 2011 today, and succeeded! Winner! I used a 113km course running from Gowerton out through Neath, up to Glynneath and over the Rhigos and Bwlch mountains, back to Neath and home again. It’s a lovely, lovely route, along the Neath canal on quiet and interesting roads up the first valley, a climb up around the valley’s head to the mountains that give fantastic views. Good hairpin climbs and descents on clean tarmac (well, except for the ice and grit), past old coal pits, showing off the South Wales valleys. Nice.
Last year, including pee stops and a garage refill stop, and a brief excursion because of some roadworks, I got round in 5:07. Its an aerobic ride so its not super quick, and there’s around 1500m of climbing. From the start today I put a gap into my old self of 1km, that built to around 2km by the base of the Rhigos according to Garmin’s virtual partner. Nice! I kept that gap up for the rest of the ride and beat last year’s me by about 6 minutes, again including pee stops. My nutrition was a bit better managed this year (I only need a couple of tubes of Glucotabs) so I didn’t need to stop for a refill.
The huge wind turbines nestled in the hills looked ominously inanimate. Good for the winter cyclist. There was very little wind today, and when the rain came in the last hour or so it wasn’t too bad. I hadn’t believed that it would rain at 2C. It usually either gets a little milder for rain round here, or it snows when its that cold. But it did. 2C and rain. Good job I was well prepared. Today was a good example of how you can prepare yourself for bad weather with good clothing. I use mostly Castelli layers at the moment. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the silvered radiation vest makes a big difference when it gets below 5C. I could really do with a clothing sponsor if anyone’s interested in me trying out some stuff! Cycling is nuts for clothing costs, summer and winter.
So that’s my base training pretty much done. A week of recovery and testing should give some more fitness gains, I hope, and then it’ll be time to get stuck into lactate threshold and above threshold sessions, relearning race pacing and a little early season racing.
