Paracycling | 5th in National Champs!

After doing 29hours29mins during training camp, it was time to recover ahead of the Track National Championships on the 21st to 23rd (Feb 2025). The goal of this two week period was to reduce fatigue and hope my ankle returns to normal pain.

I initially hoped to do 2x Z1 and 2x Z2 rides when I got back, but the ankle was in a place where I felt it wasn’t sensible to ride in case I did more damage. This includes a gym session where I couldn’t even squat.

Even with 2 days of no exercise, Thursday wasn’t great. I’m not sure if the low cadence was helping or hindering recovery but it didn’t work. That said it was 38minutes on the bike.

Saturday was the big day, though, with the GB Paracycling Dev Day and an open Para session before and Gate Start practice after. While I didn’t cycle as much as I had originally planned, I came out really happy. The legs felt good during the warm up runs where I could hold 300w comfortably (again). They weren’t perfect, but they were getting there.

This was followed up by a Gated Start IP effort. The idea around this was that it would be all out, but needing to consider that my legs hadn’t recovered yet from training camp. The start wasn’t ideal, but I got myself into a place where I was efficient and held the black line. Once again, this was a reminder about holding the black line as I dominated my PB with a 5:16.0 effort and knew I had a fair bit to go in terms of time. The graph below misses out the first 10seconds, but I did at least 372w (369w NP) for 5mins5seconds and probably slightly more due to the missing first 10seconds. This is where the idea being able to target Sub5 came from.

The remaining of the session was a warm down and then it was time to get gated start practice - I was awful. My biggest problem was that I was too static and that when being static, my ankle doesn’t have the capability to push down on the pedals to start.

Fortunately, I was able to get coached by Debbie Capewell on how to do a start. There were two big takeaways for me: 1) Find my own 5 seconds. 2) Movement. The first tip was about finding something that works for me, 5 seconds is a lot of time when you are sitting there waiting so find something that allows me to do the movement part. I found, for me, that actually just sitting there and trying to relax works best so I just sit there from 15 to 2 seconds. Once I get to two seconds, I start my procedure of up, back and go. I’d describe it like a spring; once I go up, then I go back as far as I can and then bounce back instantly. 

Sunday saw my final practice session for the week, and it was about just following the black line while in Z2/Z3. I should have probably changed the gearing for the day so I could spin, but it worked out. Three efforts that felt comfortable with the benefit of continuing to practice my line.

Race Weekend! There was a mix of pressure and being relaxed - probably the right amount. I knew I needed to put in a decent effort, but I wasn’t expecting to compete. Yes, I have fancy wheels, but my helmet and position are awful. My goal was about 75second for the Kilo and 5minutes for the IP with the assumption that I would need a 65second Kilo to win and around 4:30 IP to win. Estimates were almost perfect with 65.98 winning the Kilo and 4:37 winning the IP (Archie did a 4:32 in C4 which factored would be 4:28 factored). Both are within possibilities, but not currently. 

I did my leg openers for the weekend in the morning, which was just under an hour at 74w average (100w NP). The main thing was to just get the legs spinning again to see how I felt ahead of the afternoon’s kilo.

The Kilo is all about the start; it’s make or break. Unfortunately for me, it was a break. I got my timing slightly wrong and I tried to go half a second too soon. That meant that when the gate was released, my body weight was in all the wrong place as you can see from the photo below. 

Essentially, I put all my pressure on the left side of the body to get the start process going and with the timing off, the pressure on the left side had to continue even more so. As a result, the handlebar turned left. I also unclipped on my left foot, which is a surprise given how fused in the left foot normally is. In a weird way, I was more confident in my start after the issue - previously I would have crashed quite badly with lack of momentum. 

That said, I was able to continue and if you focus on the final 2 laps, I wasn’t that far out compared to others. I difficulty that I had was I felt I had got to terminal velocity and that I couldn’t pedal any quicker. The big takeaway if that I need to be able to hold higher cadence. That will take time to develop and also will be a step into the unknown. That said it’s a valuable skill to have especially with the Kilo. 

With all that being said, I’d rather mess up the Kilo start and have a good start to the IP. I finished with a time of 1:27, but probably should have been looking at around a 1:12.

The IP, on the other hand, started as good as I could have hoped for. There is a long way to go for it be perfect but I got going and then started putting the pressure down. I should have probably attacked the start a bit more, but I was too cautious about Archie having just smashed in a 4:32. I wanted to stay controlled, but it was too controlled. 

The first 250m was way too slow and I lost around 3-4 seconds as a result. Once I got going through, it was close to perfect in terms of solo pacing. My average 125m time (excluding the first 250m) was 9.212 seconds with my quickest being 8.817 (375-500m) and my slowest was 9.407. For the stats nerds, my Standard Deviation was 0.16 which aligns very well with the quick people (I might look into this more as Xavier’s was so much better compared to everyone else’s at 0.07).  

My position is something I need to work on and I could easily make up a lot of time. However, I took the cautious approach in terms of feeling comfortable with it being my first on pursuit bars. It will be interesting to see how well I can at the end of the year but I’m really happy with my benchmark time I set of 5:04.

Looking at the others, as mentioned I lost 3-4 seconds in the first lap (250m), but after that it was just consistently losing time evenly. Even without someone to tell me my lap times, I was smooth. Arguably, I was too smooth and would have gained more time with someone telling me my lap times as it happened - I’d say that lost me at least a second in the final kilo. So without any changes, that is already a 4:59. 

I also think I paced it too well, I didn’t get off the bike dying like I should have. I think from a power output perspective (which I don’t have the data on), I had more in me. That said I rode the black line as best as I could with high power which is quicker than raw power and all over the place. 

It will be interesting to get some analysis on how much speed I lost due to aerodynamics. I have since replaced my helmet (getting a red aero helmet is difficult). The time from that will be a fair bit. I also have a bike fit for the setup on the 14th of March as I look to dial in the setup for next season. 

So what’s next? I will be having a full review of my winter, which saw a lot of fitness gains but a lot of rookie mistakes. My FTP is around 350w but I did put on some weight to around 80-81kg.

I will also start being coached which will be another benefit. Not only should I see power gains, but they will be more sustainable. The bike fit as I mentioned above will be looking at road bike and track bike. A new helmet should provide some gains too. 

This doesn’t take into account the off-the-bike gains of knowing nutrition better and going to the gym more. 

The focus now turns to the road season with the first round of the Paracycling National Series being the first weekend of April, that meant for a month or so “offseason” to reduce the fatigue and focus more on endurance.