I am using the ride to raise some money for Mind, the mental health charity. I wanted to do it for them as I’ve struggled with my mental health on and off for over a decade and still take daily medication and regularly see a therapist. Part of my condition is a constant feeling of not being good enough and being overly critical of myself. Most of the time I can keep that negative voice in check but it just needs a chink to get into my head. Monday’s session gave it that chink.

It was designed to be a hard session; a ramp session starting above threshold for 2 minutes, 10 minutes at threshold then increasing by 10W every minute until I couldn’t keep going. The 2 minute interval was hard but the 10 minute one, which should have been tough but ok, was harder than I expected. I managed to do 5 of the ramps (out of a possible 10) and finished feeling quite disappointed. My left knee felt stiff, my quads were sore and the negativity began. Am I really in the shape to do this ride, what if I have problems with my knee during the ride, how will I handle doing more climbing than I’ve ever done before? The reality is that the session was ok; I set my 2nd best 20 minute power and my 3rd best 10 minute power. Both of these will be important when it comes to the climbs. Keeping hold of the reality of the situation is vitally important now. The next 2 weeks are going to be tough physically, I need to be strong mentally as well.

The rest of this week’s sessions were really hard. A long VO2Max session got interrupted by a phone call and I ended up cutting it short and a 10x30s interval session was incredibly tough.

Some good news from the coach this week helped to combat some of the negativity that was creeping in. My power numbers are all up, my resistance to fatigue has improved as has my short burst “battery”. The sessions may feel like they are pushing me beyond what I can do but they appear to be having results.

For the weekend endurance ride I tried something different. Rather than having my power being on screen the whole time I just set out to ride my bike but at a slightly higher intensity than I would if I were just going out for a spin. At the same time it wasn’t an all out push myself hard effort. On a similar course to last week I ended up being slightly faster, with a slightly higher average power. Plus I felt like I’d been riding my bike and not just doing a workout session. A win-win.