Bad week for training

The project I've been working on went live over the last 10 days. Training and sleep have been hard to come by.

I've managed 3 x 30 minute cycle and 2 x 30 minute treadmill sessions in the gym plus 1 1/2 hours mountain biking yesterday shaking down the new build of the training bike.

The training bike is spot on. However, one of the stem bolts rounded when I tried to adjust the headset when I got back :o( I need to get this out and replaced before we set off for Wales on Friday. I also need to bleed the brakes on my other bike as I have no front brake to speak of.

There wont be any more training this week as we have the big weekend in Wales coming up. The hours are starting to reduce at work now so I should be able to ramp up the training when we return from Wales. It's going to be a hard last 4 weeks :o)

Nokia 5500 sport training tools

Even though I've had the bits and pieces for ages, I only got round to using them for the first time this week.

The Nokia 5500 sport has built in pedometer and GPS support. The standard software has a training diary, customisable activites and tests. I got a 54 channel bluetooth GPS unit cheap of eBay, fired up the software and gave it a spin.

It seems easy to use and is pretty useful. It would be nice if it supported a heart rate monitor too but for nothing I can't complain too much. So for each training session I can select run or cycle and it measures the the distance, average speed, etc and stores it in the training diary. A bit gimicky but nice to have. A few screen shots below.

Training bike in pieces

My training bikes frame is a bit big for proper off-roading. So, a few weeks ago I got an eBay bargain frame for £15 to swap the parts of my training bike on to.

Now I'm working silly hours and away from home, it is in pieces in the garage. Aaron, my team mate for CLIC24 is using the bike for the Wales weekend in two weeks time so I've got to try and get some time together to rebuild it and do some shakedown rides.

There seems to be too much to do in the time available at the moment :o(

Easter Friday training update

Another OK week this week. I'm stuck at work so no training today. I'll try and get in the gym over the next week while I'm away.

I did a 50 minute run last Saturday which really hurt. I haven't run that far for about 20 years ! I've also got two rides in of just over an hour each.

It's going to be hotel gym training for the next week if I'm lucky !

Not as much riding as I'd hoped but OK

My son was not well last weekend, we got hardly any sleep so no big ride, again !!!

On the plus side I've squeezed in two 1 hour rides and a 40 minute run during the week.

The Wales trip is only a couple of weeks away and the project I'm working on goes live next weekend over the Easter break. So, training's going to get harder to fit in :o(

This weeks training

An OK week this week. Still busy at work but managed the Tuesday night ride and an extra 1 hour ride one morning. Going to try and get out for a couple of hours this weekend.

First night session

Well, we did as we planned. Yesterday evening we managed an 8 mile ride in the dark on easy going off-road terrain. No problems really except it was very cold so got numb fingers :o(

It only took just over an hour so we'll try and do two circuits next time.

More good news was that the Dinotte lights seemed to work fine and ran for over an hour on one set of batteries. The head torches worked fine too !