Rehab following Pippingford

In the aftermath of the last race at Pippingford, I had a really stiff neck for Monday and Tuesday and was continually finding new bruises and watching older ones change colour. They are now mostly yellow whit a hint of purple… which is nice! I have been engaging in pain therapy this week with a few good hard sessions this week to help me com to terms with the disappointment of last Sunday. 30:30 intervals on Tuesday, a cyclo-cross style session on Thursday and a very windy 125km ride with Robin from Areufit.co.uk and Franck from Giant on Saturday. On Sunday I volunteered my services to ride part of stage 5 of this years Tour de France (I think it is the one where Thor Husovd chased down a couple of French blokes to win). There was a posh Tacx turbo trainer set up outside the city hall linked to the Garmin data from the stage. Basically the resistance goes up when the road goes up. It’s a pretty trick set up but feels like your riding blindfolded because you can be happily cruising along at 50kph and suddenly you hit a small rise and the resistance kicks in, then by the time you have got in the right gear the resistance drops off again. Obviously in real life you would see the rise and change gear in preparation or stand up and power over it. I turned up just before 3 to do the final leg of the stage and try to help raise some money of cancer research. I think they raised over £400 during the day which is great, and it was good to get a solid ‘tempo’ session in too.


It feels good to feel the legs burn again and hopefully I can be in a better place, mentally and physically, for the final round of the national series at Newnham Park next weekend.