The last two weeks

Don't know how I did it, but woke with a very tight and sore lower back on Friday last week. Had trouble bending enough to pull on my shoes. Seemed to have a lot of referred pain in legs too. Not quite sciatic pain, but enough to make things uncomfortable.

Fortunately, my back loosened up over the next day or so. I was assigned to fill a Rescue Operators spot at Gordon Fire Station on the Friday and Saturday, so I commuted, and included a bit of SST/ low L4 work each way.

One route I took was around 2.5hrs all up, the other, around 2hrs.

On Sunday (28th Sept.) I trained on Dunc Gray Velodrome with all the usual suspects. I started with a Standing Start 1500m and timed the last 5 laps at 1.36.9....only 2m 39sec Pursuit pace for me :-( And it felt way harder than it should have!

I then joined three other riders and we rode a Team Pursuit formation for 1500m, 2km and 2km........well, that's as long as I could stay there anyway. Found myself really struggling to get into a rhythm. My guess is that I was still suffering the after-effects of that lower back drama a few days earlier.

Monday was just a "Track warm-up" on the KK trainer, which goes like this: 10min easy build up to ~250w, then off the bike and walk around and sit for 5min or so. I find this really helps reduce the soreness and tightness I often feel in hamstrings during the early part of my warm up. I then go into another build-up alternating 1min @ 235w, 250w, 270w, 290w and 320w with 1min @ 200w. I then take another two or three minutes easy, hit 3 x ~500w for 15sec with 45sec easy spin between, and then pronounce myself ready for action.


I decided to do my Tuesday L6 workout on the KK trainer to sort of look after my back, so repeated my track warm-up then went 3 sets of 5 x 30sec on / off with the efforts starting at 450w and decaying to 390w in the last couple of reps in the first set, 430w down to 390w for the second set, and the third set I "paced" and held a constant 380w for each rep. Still not feeling 100% but at least a bit better.

Steady 2.5hrs with 45min of low L4 work on Wednesday, and on Thursday trained on the road on my TT bike with 5 x 10sec Starts, 2 x SS500m and 1 x FL1KM.

I have a Power Tap set up on this bike and saw 486w and 475w for the 500's and 396w for the flying kilo....feeling reasonably comfortable. Seemed to be over the back thing now.

Back on the track today for a couple of Flying 1 lappers at the end of my warm-up, then 2 x Flying Kilos. First kilo was 1.16.5 and felt very easy....suppose it should at that pace, but as I've mentioned before, I have always seemed to have trouble producing good training times on the track, even though my Wattages are adequate when I train on the road.

Anyway, the second kilo was 1.13.3.........harder, but a bit short of all out. I don't ever recall riding faster than 1.15 in training before. I hadn't planned on doing much more, so I stopped after that second kilo. Trying to keep some semblance of "freshness" going into my last ten days before the World Championships start.

I've got another L6 trainer workout scheduled for over the weekend. I'm on duty with the Fire Dept. both days (and Monday and Tuesday nights), but should be able to find a quiet time to get my training done.

I'm planning to be back on the track on Wednesday, running full race set up with discs, "good legs", etc. From that time on, it will be just fine tuning my pace judgement and keeping legs fresh with short, fast efforts until race day. Can't wait.

Mike