On Adjusting Expectations

Reporting from here in Scotland, I can relay, to the surprise of precisely no-one, that the winter is long.

It's getting to that stage now where I'm starting to feel like we should be out of it already. On the weekends, almost unbidden, I am finding my pedals mysteriously attached to my race bike. My legs scream for light and air, and so endure being smeared with embro' for the merest semblance of summer riding. I push hard - not just for training, but because I am barely wearing enough layers to stay warm for ten minutes stationary.

It seems mad, sometimes. The work; the time; the effort put in over the off-season. For five months of the year we prepare for the next seven - the "good" seven. All of these non-rides - the city-centre commuting, the long nights of base training, the quick blasts to test out the bike - don't seem to count towards the legendary "good days", where the miles tick by under a warming sun, or where you're tooth by jowl with a jostling pack of enthusiastic racers, or where you can stop and sit out in the sun and feel without looking which panels of your kit are black and which are white.

If there are any blessings to a long winter, it is that it encourages you to stay true to a training plan. When the options for training are unstructured hill repeats up and down a pitch black hillside versus sitting for an hour in a temperature-controlled room with a heart rate monitor and a laptop stuck on an online stopwatch, the scientific approach seems most appealing to me.

Which isn't to say that it's easy. I have been following a back-to-back interval day plan by Chris Carmichael, and whilst I cannot yet give results to vouch for its efficacy, it certainly does the job of making me utterly, pathetically knackered.

The short duration of intervals makes starting easy - there are hardly any excuses not to do them if you are only going to be on the turbo for an hour - but the intensity also makes those durations the longest possible time you can imagine.

Earplugs in both sides to drown out the drone of the turbo trainer are the only distraction from the task at hand. At the end of the fourth of seven sprints, my eyes are squeezed shut, my brain searching through my legs for a single patch of muscle fibres not screaming from the effort, then switching my position slightly to force them to fire. In left and right ear it's Bad Religion:

I look for inner wealth,
By punishing myself.

It's gut-wrenching, vicious stuff. Every time I open my eyes and glance at the clock, there are fractions in my mind.

Fifteen more seconds. Three-quarters of the way there on the fourth sprint of seven. Once I'm done I'll be over half way through this block. And there's only three blocks. So I'm already over one sixth done.

For the longer-durations, it gets more and more complex, as I set out the minute markers that signal the end of one phase and the start of another. For all the dullness and repetition, I cannot afford to let my mind wander, or else my efforts will follow it. The furthest I can go is to a race, or a dream. To holding more than 450 Watts towards Hampton Court Palace. To jumping up on the pedals and dancing to the top of the Angliru.

The delusions sink in, somewhat. The winter has been long - I believe I may have mentioned that - and it has been even longer since I raced. I want to believe that a metamorphosis is being undertaken, that these long hours will result in something wholly unrecognisable once I get back onto the road.

I should stop asking for miracles.

The plan suggests that Saturdays can be used for crit'-pace rides, which I tend to take as liberty to time-trial or climb or otherwise test myself. Every time, I go out with the idea in my head that I will now, somehow, be unbeatable. That I will have trained myself into a state better than I ever have been, fitter and lighter than the best of my best. It is, of course, a wholly preposterous idea.

Looking at things logically, I am still midway through my first real training block of the year - I have put barely six weeks of true, race-preparation effort in. I still haven't done any real climbing work, and I have a kilogram or two to lose to get to race weight. The idea that I would, at this stage, be better than my best last year, after all the work I had put in then, is an unintentional slight on my past self, and completely unreasonable. Benefits come after training, after all, rather than during.

Yet still, I desire for my performance to saltate. Looking back on how I have developed over the last two years (as this blog very handily allows me to do), I can see the massive steps that I have taken.

But this is just time being compressed by paucity of information and uninteresting memory. At least I have the time stamps to confirm what I know - that between those posts, days, weeks and months went by where I worked, and worked hard, at becoming a better rider. Not all of it was fitness work - some of it was very necessary rest and kidding around - but it was all part of building up who I am and making me proud of what I have achieved.

So I'll carry on, and I won't take my disappointments too seriously. It's a long winter, but there'll be days, soon. Good days.