Half Term Training Week

I have had a weeks holiday to chauffer my son to and from football training and to work on all those jobs that have been mounting up. In addition, I wanted to start some cycling training as I am now at my heaviest ever and a bit of training might 1. Help my disposition (generally depressed as my job, my savings and my pension have been blown out of the water by the financial crisis), and 2. I might manage to loose a few of those extra pounds.

Actually, I have had two weeks off, this week and last week, as my sons school, being a private school, gives the kids two weeks off for this half term (you pay them all this money then they don’t keep your kids as long as the state schools!). The first week was spent just resting followed by a long weekend in Dublin visiting the out-laws (but I did sneak off to our Dublin office for a few hours on Friday and watched the dealers as the pound collapsed against the US Dollar, glad we went to Disney this year when the Pound was strong).

I got very few of the jobs I set out to complete done, and I got even less of those jobs my wife had wanted me to complete done. I did spend a lot of time on the telephone with the Inland Revenue, my HR Department, and my tax accountant trying to sort out the fact that the method of calculation used by my employer (the “Averaging method”) for my beneficial loans tax on my P11D has overestimated my liability by more than double due to a further advance taken out just before the end of the tax year. Trying to get the figures for the “Accurate Method” so that they can be presented to a Tax Inspector is like trying to get the lunar buggy back from the moon!

Anyway, less of these rants and down to cycling business – did I actually do any training – I am pleased to say I did.

I hate going on the road alone firstly for safety reasons and secondly because it is no fun unless you are sharing it with someone else, plus of course the cold and damp weather put me off, so I did not go out on to the road.

I have an old turbo trainer circa 1990 (bought new from Holdsworthy in Putney to get me fit after I fractured my neck playing rugby) which I use as I haven’t got around to putting before the Household Finance Committee a proposal to acquire a modern fluid trainer (not that he Finance Committee is willing to consider any more cycling expenditure at the moment and I, unlike the Chairwoman, The Wife, do not have the ability to fast track expenditure and get retrospective approval). This is a hefty rusty steel contraption with a roller under the back wheel attached to two fan wheels upon which is permanently mounted my Raleigh Record Sprint (Reynolds 501) circa 1985.

(Santa Hint – anyone wanting to buy me a new iMagic fluid trainer for Christmas is welcome to do so).

Each day this week I have been on the Turbo Trainer in the kitchen knocking out an hour to an hour and a half with an average heart rate in the high 140s and a cadence of 90 rpm. This has been painful but therapeutic. My two bike computers have been on the handlebars showing me that I have been maintaining the pace and keeping up the work. The whole house smells of burnt rubber after each session and I had to mop up the sweat off the tiles on the kitchen floor. In addition I keep finding bits of rubber from the tyre which I missed in the clearing up exercise and which when stepped on leave nasty black smears on the floor tiles.

Monday to Thursday went by without any incidents but Friday was like a car crash. After 30 minutes I got a puncture (the tyre had done 460 miles on the Turbo and had melted and was coming apart at the seams). In order to save time, rather than fix the puncture I dived into the garage and removed the wheel from my Raleigh Quasar (again 501 circa 1985) and fitted that to the turbo bike. Forty minutes later, don’t I get another puncture! I was annoyed. I then had to get off the Turbo and fix both wheels. The original wheel also required a new tyre. Fortunately I had kept an old racing tyre from last year (Specialized Roubaix 23/25) which will hopefully do for the near future (but I suspect it is probably too soft) and next time I go into Corridori in Banstead I will have to get myself one of those special tyres designed to be used on a Turbo or Fluid trainer.

Both punctures were old repairs where the heat generated from the roller had melted the repair and it had failed.

All in all, all things considered, not to bad, 90 miles over 6 hours in 5 days. More than I have done for a long time. The question is will I be able to keep up the training when I return to work next week?