Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

"With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable"



Friday 8 January 2010

Training and cat waffle

All seems to be on track (pun intended) with my training with a motorpacing sessions yesterday at DISC going really well.  The difference not working full time has to be well and truly acknowledged...should have done it sooner.

Last weeks power test sessions on the roads indicate that no matter how hard we've tried, my best power output which I can keep up for quite a long time is at grind cadence.    I'm no Lance Armstrong (thank god)  I'm a Jan Ullrich (hmmmmm).  On the track I've been gradually upping the gear inches attempting to discover which is my sweet spot for the various races I do and naturally as I up the gear inch the cadence decreases..if it didn't my name would be Jeannie  or Lance and I'd be a world beater at any age. 

This is also important for road TT's as over the past  year or two I've been going for increasing  cadence but my TT'ing has been awful which I had assumed was fatigue and age..but maybe just maybe it was also as a result of changing my riding style....we'll see next TT season.

A group of us at work  had half thought we might go in for the Murray to Moyne 24 cycle relay in March ..but yesterday we realised we'd left our organisation far too late.  Getting the riders together was no trouble...it was the rest of the organisation that was going to be a problem.  So sadly, that project has been scrapped.

My 35 day cycle from Palermo to Como (actually 28 days on the bike over the 35 days) is getting closer.  This is going to be a gigantic challenge for me as I'm just not used to riding >100 hilly kms day after day after day.  My racing tends to be from a 500m dash around the track to a max of 90 minutes, so this is going to take me out of my comfort zone  into a world of DIScomfort.

Cat waffle..

Sometime later this year we might all be OS at the same time for a short period  and so I've been trying to work out what to do with the cats.  I did think of getting someone to house sit but this week's offerings/cat related catastrophes(again pun intended) have made me quash that thought......so in order of play:

1. Over the weekend ...Pippi, a  cat with very long fur, short legs and a balance issue sat down in the kitty litter tray before she should...which resulted in one VERY smelly cat, a disgusting clean up for  us and a visit to the vet for  Pippi to have  nether region fur shave/trim.
2. Monday....Flea, the other cat can't keep soft food down and so when he can't resist temptation ends up noisily and copiously chucking. The reason he chucked this time was discovered in the rumpus room...result...clear up vomit and  dead bloody carcass, chase feathers over the entire house etc etc
3. Thursday...dead rat.  plus wipe up result of purging grass eating.
4. Today/Friday...dead rat.

I think the cattery is the best option but  too many more weeks like that and they might be meeting with a nasty accident....

3 comments:

Judith said...

I think my time trialling has suffered a bit from a change to up my cadence which is great except for the reduction in strength which has been noticable and I have only just really begun putting some cadence of 70-80 sessions in to get it back a bit.....it is a fine balance....I trained so hard in December ...probably too hard buit hopefully have built some good base (or at least started to)....we head off to Tour Downunder next week...are you going?

Liz said...

nope...I'm saving my hols for May /June when I go OS, also I'm not good in the heat and hot weather is a given for TDU!

Judith said...

That is why we are staying at Glenelg - across the road from the beach!