Frome & District 10 mile TT on the U/A361

At the moment, the main focus of cycling seems to be evaluating the extent of knee pain – before, during and after cycling.. Every ride is trying to gauge whether I should be resting, going slow or going hard. If I train, will the knee get worse? Or is is just my mental imagination and should I just completely ignore it?

You end up just fudging it, doing a bit and hoping for the best.

When I do go out, I tend to go quite hard. If you can only do 30 minutes, you might as well get a good bang for your buck, so to speak. At the moment, my training regime is more reminiscent of  a Graeme Obree super intense 3 hours a week with five days of resting rather than a steady 15 hour winter weekly plod.

Last Sunday was my first race of the season, and it was a rather curious build up. In the week before, I did a couple of very short efforts, tentatively testing the  reaction of knee to a bit more effort. On Thursday, I was diligently doing my physio exercises, which primarily involve standing up on one leg from a chair holding a book. Unfortunately, after one exercise session, I developed a shooting pain right in middle of my posterior. It was rather confusing pain, as I wasn’t aware of any muscle / tendon in that part of the body. I was convinced with this shooting pain, I definitely wouldn’t be racing in two days time.

It was kind of comic from one point of view. Doing exercises to improve your bad knee, and you end with an even worse pain in the buttocks. But, it felt comic in a very unfunny way. As the great song goes ‘I want to ride my bicycle’ - not feel a pain in the bum.

Convinced the race was off, I spent Friday only gingerly trying to get out of any chair, as if I was seriously crippled. But the good news is that this shooting pain, disappeared as soon as it came. Saturday, it was completely healed. (On Sunday I met a nice chap from Strada Cycles, Richard Spinks) who works as a physio and suggested it was most likely the pain was the base of your sciatica nerve, which seemed to make sense)

So anyway, I found myself on Sunday without any good excuse to avoid the race. I’d done very little cycling in the past three weeks, but only 10 miles meant a 20 minute effort was as good a session as I could want. So I decided to make the trek down to deepest Wiltshire and make my first effort to trouble the timekeepers in a race against the clock.

It felt more like a winter training ride than a super-serious race. I dressed up like a winter training ride, three thermal base layers, three layers of gloves, self-heated hot pads and warm overshoes. I was seeking marginal gains in staying warm rather than marginal gains in aerodynamics.

Slightly disconcertingly was seeing the startsheet, with Tejvan Pettinger, my own self, listed at top seed, number 70, with the scarcely believable pb of 19.07. How I ever managed an average speed of 32mph in 2012 I don’t know  - it felt a distant memory after a few months of trudging around the Yorkshire Dales at 14mph.

Kitted up in my triple layers of winter insulation, I didn’t have any illusions about breaking any speed records. But, once you’re racing you do want to a decent time, and a decent position. As PJ says, you don’t want to peak for a 10 mile TT in early Feb, but  it’s rather nice if you’re not too slow.

The race started in typically average fashion. Coming down the ‘ski slope’ my visor fell away (the superglue having become weaker during winter months in loft – always good to these mechanical mishaps out of the way early in season. I wasn’t the only one with tales of equipment coming loose after a few months in the shed). Then I had to put on the brakes as the cars were descending this steep slope at about 25mph.  I freewheeled down the descent more concerned about the flapping visor and keeping a safe distance from the  cars in front. One thing about racing in Feb is that you definitely feel no inspiration to seek marginal seconds from unnecessary risks. Perhaps in the peak of the season, I would be cursing my luck at a missed opportunity about a pb. But, that’s the advantage of early season, low expectation races, you don’t worry about holdups. The rest of the race was satisfactory, slowing down for a few roundabouts and grinding away, mostly worried about the extent of discomfort in the knee, relieved to see the finish, and relieved it wasn’t a really super-hard hilly time trial.

Back in the village HQ, I found I’d done a mid 21. 21.29 a few seconds behind Ben Anstie (Cadence CT) and half a minute ahead of P.Jones (Bristol South CC) Not bad for a chap whose been combining the serious pursuit of time trialling with bringing up the next generation of Bristol South CC.

For my mid winter effort,  I received the very welcome bonus of a nice brown envelope with cash inside. (and I didn’t even have to ask any questions in Parliament). £20 for 20 minutes work. Not a bad pay rate, if you ignore the 200 hours of winter training, and £30 cost of petrol to get to race.

Well, thanks to Frome and District CC and the army of marshalls wrapped up in the winter cold on the roundabouts. Nice and reassuring to get back to a village HQ and a pot of tea. This after all is why we’ve been spending all winter going out in the salt and grit.

Slightly more disconcerting was seeing the startsheet for next weekends North Road Hard-riders event – a full field of 120 rides plus 15 reserves. It includes some top names from the road racing scene and it promises to be a real cracker. 25 hilly miles, just what the doctor ordered.

Results Frome & District CC 10 mile TT A 361 U