Saturday 17 March 2012

Nationals!

On Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, I had light training sessions. Wednesday was the First day of racing. It was pretty hot and the track was really fast. I hadn't slept well the previous night due to high amounts of adrenaline and I was ready to smash it. I warmed up with my fast wheels and aero-bars. I was on the rollers for 15 minutes before doing a power jump and an entry. When the time came for me to do a gate start, i was feeling pretty nervous. I came out of the gate pretty well, my first lap was feeling pretty good, i did a 19.1s first lap. The first half of the second lap was good, then i hit the wall. My legs died and so did my speed. My end time was 34.7s.

The next day was the match sprints. My favourite event. I qualified with a time of 11.555s. It was a PB. The first race that i did, i sat on the front and controlled it. I won. The second race, however, was against one of my training partners. He qualified four 100ths faster than i did. The first race i was leading and i jumped first. I decided to hold a reasonable speed and go for a double kick. Unfortunately, that didnt work. He came past me at the finish line. In the second heat that we had, i attacked and went under him, with just over 1 lap to go. I managed to beat him in that heat. In the final heat we ended up track standing in an attempt to make the other one take the lead of the race. I attacked with just under 3/4 of a lap to go. I fought to the finish but my team mate beat me to the line.

On the last day was the team sprint. I was in the gate. I did a 19.1 second first lap. The second rider came through and had our first 500 at a time of 33.9 seconds. Our last rider finished us off with a time of 49.853. We qualified 3rd behind our other Victorian team (who were supposed to be our B team) by less than a 10th of a second and behind the NSW team who broke the Australian record. We then raced of in the 3v4 final. My first lap was about 2 tenths slower than the first lap of our qualifying. We ended up finishing third with a time of 50.275. We won that race by 2 tenths of a second.

Overall i was happy with how my team and i went. Every event I did was a personal best.

Thursday 8 March 2012

Heavy Squats

Monday. On Monday we had single squats in the gym. I also did 3x3 of bench press and 3x4 power cleans. We did singles because nationals is about a week away.

On Wednesday i rode down to DISC. during my warmup my power numbers were reasonable. We did motorbikes efforts an had to pass the motor bike and beat it to the finish line. Hard and fast.

Today we had singles again. Had a number of PBs. PBd in Squats, Power cleans, Press and I also did a chinup (and a half) with a 32.5kg weight belt.

Nationals is 6 days away. Very excited. Hoping for mid to low 34s 500m TT, a place in the Match sprints would also be very awesome and my team and I are hoping to give the Aussie Team Sprint record a whack!

Sunday 4 March 2012

Sid Patterson Grand Prix

Saturday was the Sid Patterson Grand Prix. I was invited to race in the U17s category in the support races. There was a 5 man team pursuit, a motor pace and a scratch race. In the team pursuit i was leading it, i wasnt going out very hard but i still managed to drop most of the enduro's off the back for a couple of laps. After i did 2 laps i pulled off the front and let the others go through. That was part of the plan. I was still feeling fresh however, and probably could have continued to go on. We were leading for about 3 quarters of the race but the other team ended up gaining on us near the end. The next race was a motor pace, i placed 4th in the motor pace. Finally, in the scratch race i placed 3rd. After the racing i got given all of my Vic gear including my skin suits, booties, shirts and jacket.

Today i had state training. My watts were down after racing the previous night. We did skills work, break and run drills and some gate starts. I was happy with my gate starts, they were pretty perfect time wise.

Thursday 1 March 2012

Jumping on top of boxes!

Monday consisted of weights, 3x3 squats, 5x5 bench press and some power cleans. Squats were fairly easy, still on a reasonably light weight to work on technique. The technique is pretty good, so i will start moving up in weight. I changed up my hand held positioning for bench press, to work more on my pectorals instead of my triceps. Then onto power cleans, i only did one set, because after the first set my wrist was hurting.

On Wednesday we did motor bike efforts. Lots of fun, nice and fast! My watts were reasonable too, very much looking forward to nationals.

Today, weights. Smashed out a single rep of squats, before going on to do some plyo's, press and power cleans. Jumping onto boxes was done, then lifting of things over my head began. I  got 2 sets of 4 and 1 set of 3 (instead of 3 sets of 5). Press is proving to be fairly difficult at this stage, i think i am going to have to go up in 0.5kg jumps instead of 1kg. Lastly, came Power cleans. 3 sets of 4 accomplished. I am now the equivilent to top of the records board in the gym. I'm pleased with that. Now to add more weight!

Nationals is 2 weeks out from today. I am starting to peak performance wise. I'm going to give it all i have.