Post race legs - OUCH!

After a winter of cyclocross I had a little break and headed off for a week of skiing! Not exactly an ideal rest as we skied all day and partied all night. I overdosed on cheese, wine and jaeger and flew home feeling rather worse for wear and not at all raring to get back on the bike. I work as a junior doctor and my shifts are fairly full on. Please do not judge us all by those dimwits you've seen on BBC3! Most of us are fairly efficient, competent and not that weird! So after a couple of weeks off the bike I set about transferring the strength I had built from cyclocross in to some road racing legs. This was slightly thwarted by that awful weather. I can only sit on turbo for a maximum of 1.5h before i'm raging with hatred for my bike, my boyfriend and the world in general. Thankfully the weather warmed up and I headed out on our local chaingang. I've devised a plan with this - I head out with the very fast group and invariably get dropped a few miles up the road, this allows me a head start and if I keep nailing myself I can get over the long very inconvenient hill before being caught be the slightly less fast group. Then if I'm feeling good I can usually hang on! I tend to be dropped just as the guys ramp it up for the final uphill sprint finish. It a great work out for the legs and is also good for group riding skills. Currently I am the only girl that seems mad enough to turn up.

I'm not a huge fan of training so I have to work out lots of strategies to make myself head out and I really don't enjoy riding on my own in the dark. Thankfully my housemate josh, who broke his collar bone in the aforementioned ski trip, has now healed and so the two of us have been hitting the roads in the evenings. Josh is one of the best friends a girl could wish for. He often brings presents home, is always cheerful and if you need a new bit of shiny bike equipment he knows where to find it at a bargain price. My bank account hates him. He has persuaded me during a rather drunken pancake day celebration party to buy a new mtb and race a 6 hour enduro with him as a pair! So at some point I'm going to have to turn my road legs into mtb legs. I tested the road legs and raced this weekend just gone. My legs felt strong (for me) despite a bit of bad luck being stuck behind a crash I felt I rode well. There is plenty of room for improvement! And for that reason I shall be attempting to race saturday and sunday in preparation for the tour of Malta. Another race I have somehow been persuaded to race. I'm just hoping the other mule bar girls will look after me.

Love Phoebe
xxx