Paracycling | Getting my Track Accreditation (almost)...

As mentioned in my previous post, this training block is two months, split by back-to-back races at the Cambridge Crit and London Academy GP (both being 3/4s).

The first month of the block was focused on track accreditation ahead of the winter - with it being a lot easier to get slots within summer. While I’ve done one track session before, I decided to do the taster ahead of the two sessions.

The other focus of the first half of the block was to try and get to the mythical 4w/kg FTP. I started the block knowing that my FTP was between 300-310w at 79kg which meant that I was either 1.5kg too heavy or needed to improve my FTP 6w.

My first ride of the block was my local chaingang which I did my best ride with them yet - by surviving one and a half laps (38mins). To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect coming off the Para Nat Series, but the legs were fairly good.The 38min effort was at 277w (300w NP), but it was the 10mins at 313w (330w NP) which really destroyed the legs. However, that is normally the effort that I get dropped on so to keep up felt really good - but I knew I was suffering a lot more than I was the previous lap. While I’d love to keep up, this ride will always be the final ride of 3-4 days of intensity, so it will always be a sufferfest. The other thing to note is that it was a high VI ride, which is a weakness of mine, so I’ll be working on trying to get better at them. 

The next ride was a TT session in the aero position with the base pace set at 300w and increased pace on the climbs. The purpose of this is to gradually increase the time in the "full aero" position on the road bike. At the moment, I do 20minuteefforts which I did on that session. Unfortunately, I was just under 300w average (298w) but it was a 307w NP effort. What was more impressive was that I did 36.3kph into crosswind-turned-headwind.

I, then, did my second ride on the track ahead of the track accreditation stage 1 on the 3rd August. This went really well, I still need to work on getting started and stopping, but we will get there (and did in my next session). When on the track, it felt very comfortable going up and down the track which is always a good first step. However, it wasn’t perfect as riding on the track aggravated the injury I have on my ankle tendon - the injury that seized up during Solihull 2/3/4 and was the reason I DNSed Via Crit. As a result, I decided to give myself an early rest week (which was scheduled for the following week) ahead of doing the Stage 1 Accreditation (and the cancelled Para Road Dev Day).

Stage 1 was really good. While I was at the top, it was my first time doing laps there. I also had more confidence to start and stop by myself, which is showing great progress in my technical training. While my ankle tendon was hurting, it never got beyond “normal” pain. The pain is in the “wrong” part of the foot, but the level of pain never went beyond the levels I’m at most days - so I was happy. (This might seem odd to say I was happy I was in pain, but that’s just where life is and always has and always will be).

The following day was meant to be a Paracycling Dev Day on the road hosted by British Cycling, but it got cancelled (likely due to the Paralympics). To be honest, I was happy the Dev day got cancelled as it allowed me an additional day of rest before doing PT on the Monday. Which was also the first time in about a month that my foot didn’t prevent me from doing any workouts. Again, with additional caution, I took the planned rest week with two “Road Aero” workouts where I practice being as aero as I can be at FTP. 

The rest on Sunday meant that for the first time in weeks, I did a full PT session without compromise, which was a massive thing! I did decide to continue the rest week though and started again on the following weekend with the 20minute aero effort - which was horrible! It was just badly paced not helped by going 28mph at 300w when a car pulled out on me which I then had to speed up to continue going at the speed limit. In the end, I decided to stop a few minutes early as the ankle was getting aggrevated. While it is annoying, better to safe than sorry - especially for a training ride.

That 28mph effort got me 2nd in a Strava Segment (still 7 seconds off the KOM) and then beat or matched my PBs in the three climbs even though the base effort was 300w.

I finished the session with a minute rolling kilo effort. As part of getting ready for track, I need to improve my 1minutepower so I did a fatigued effort which got me 10th on the strava segment through another local village. I was 10 seconds off the KOM, but I know with full focus that I can probably match it in the right conditions.

The following day, I decided to test my ankle even more by doing an interval session. These sessions always put my ankle on the limit due to the torque that going out of the saddle creates throughout the whole motion of the pedal stroke. The interval session is nine efforts ranging from a 3minute effort to 30 seconds but mainly around 1minute efforts. As I’ve got fitter, the amount of efforts on this session has increased which is always a good thing. 

The first effort was the downhill segment that I got 2nd in the KOM the day before. A few things went “wrong” with this effort: 1) Headwind 2) I misjudged where the effort started and 3) I accidentally set my 2nd best ever 5minute power record! The effort was just under 3minutes at 383w (396w NP) with the lead in being 300w giving my 5min power of 347w. 

The next effort is the first climb that I always do and I smashed it. The effort felt quite easy for 1minute at 400w+ (429w, 464w NP). The thing that I didn’t quite understand was where the strava segment started which was before the sharp turn so something to note for the next interval session. I’m only 10 seconds off the KOM and I gave up 5 seconds around the corner and while the 1minute effort was good, it’s not close to what I can actually do in a max effort. I also continue the effort after the segment has finished so there is more time to gain on that part too. That said I’m now 40th overall on the segment (out of 6749) and know I can get a lot higher up.

The second climb of interval session is always the one I find most difficult. The climb isn’t steep but it gradually increases in gradient. It also has a slight drag before it meaning you don’t have any speed going into it. That said I was happy with the overall effort I made 53 seconds at 461w (488w NP). It’s also an effort which I need to do better to align to the stravasegment as the strava segment was a 1:16 effort. I’m still only 804th (out of 6744) so will probably do an all out effort at some point to see how close I can get.

The third of the back-to-back-to-back efforts is one of my favourite climbs because it’s fully exposed to the wind but it’sfairly steady. The turn is also not sharp enough that you can’t sprint through the corner. It was my final of four big efforts for a while but going 550w felt weirdly comfortable sprinting out the corner but the legs were suffering so the effort was 1min7seconds at 442w (485w NP). The segment its self took me 48 seconds (448w) to place me 123rd (out of 4963) and 13 seconds down on the KOM but I would expect to be able to beat it by a bit given the efforts before it. 

The next efforts were some sprints starting off with 20seconds at 591w followed by 26seconds at 602w before 22secondsat 678w and final effort of 25seconds at 563w. Before a final effort of 1minute7seconds at 401w (427w NP) to finish the session. 

The following week, I joined my local chaingang which I did relatively “fresh” with no super big ride or race on the weekend for once. The group was slightly slower than normal which meant I kept up easily - which was another bonus. I still need to get better at being in the group on corners but I’m slowly getting better. I also missed where the sprint was sodid a minute effort instead. The group riding was 1hour10mins at 250w (284w NP) at a speed of 37kph. 

This was followed by a weekend of Stage 2 Accreditation and a 40min post-track recovery ride. The 40minute ride was to see if exercise would help the pain in my ankle (it didn’t), but I did confirm that 270w for 30minutes was “easy”. Whichshould put my 90minute PB to shame at the moment and will be something I will do in the near future. I, then, finished the ride by doing a rolling kilo effort where I did 650w (672w) for 54seconds!!! I’m a bit gutted I didn’t realise how close I was to a minute as I sat up but I know for sure that 650w for a minute is possible. In the process I set 10th on the stravasegment of the climb that the effort was within but I know from that I will be able to get the KOM with the correct wind direction and fresh legs. Which is pretty crazy to think. 

The weekend of the Cambridge Crit saw a slightly different approach to the race compared to normal as I did the Stage 3 Accreditation for the track on the Saturday followed by a Paracycling session that Derby put on. This meant that I had around 3 hours on the bike the day before and wouldn’t have “fresh” legs for the race - I also passed the accreditation which means I only have Stage 4 to go which I’ll do at the end of September.

So, onto the first race of the block (after a slight change and a bit of peer pressure I’m also racing the London Academy Grand Prix 3rd/4th Cat race on the 31st). The race was around Cambridge town centre, which had one technical corner with a range of narrow and wide roads. I got myself into the 3rd row (out of 78 riders) but failed to clip in… that said itjust meant that I was near the back rather than at the front. Due to the nature of the course and that there were so many riders, as long as you were in the group, you would be towed along. I was picking off riders here and there and just staying at the back, until a crash happened which meant that I was in a group of 5 (with Callum, who I raced against in Bovingdon, briefly in the group before he attacked). I should have followed his move, but I thought someone would jump on his wheel and by the time I could do anything about it, he was too far ahead. 

The group didn’t work well together, not helped by a massive headwind section so I decided to see if I could split the group and either go solo or have someone who was willing to work with me. Unfortunately, neither happened with each attack bringing a different person meaning that they were fresher and each time, they refused to work.

In the end, I made nine attacks to try to split the group and none of them stuck. I think there were a few lessons I could take from this.

1. Be less predictable. Not helped by the circuit, but at points people were pre-anticipating the move so much that they were looking for me each lap. 

2. Worry less about one person on the wheel. I think if I just towed someone who was clearly weaker than me, it wouldn’t have been an issue. I should have been able to drop them later.

3. Counter attacks rather than be the attacker. There weren’t many attacks by others but the majority of the time, I was the aggressor. The main move that almost worked was when I countered someone’s attack at the end of the headwind section. 

Overall, I’m delighted with the race effort both in terms of technical ability and power. I was one of the best in my small group at technical skills which is something I’m not use to. I also was overtaking to stay in the group using my technical skills at the beginning, too. When looking at power, I’m delighted that I managed to do my 3rd best ever 5minute power (337w, 350w NP) and then sustained that to do my season best for 10minutes (318w, 325w NP) and my 2nd season best for 20minutes (301w, 317w NP) before the group became a lot more tactical. 

The following Tuesday, I joined my local chaingang for the last one of the year. In the end, it was a 3up TTT which was nice but also my legs were also dead from the weekend. We were doing relatively long turns on the front which worked quite well as you could get into the rhythm of the pacing better as well as recover longer. 

While the effort didn’t set any power records, it was still 300w NP (281w average) ride for 43minutes. I wanted to test my legs so I did a 2min52second pull at 350w (356w NP) which destroyed me and I didn’t really recover after. 

That said I kept in the group and did my turns but was suffering a lot in the end. I’m looking forward to next year’s chaingangs where I will already have the ability to keep up and I can then use them to hone my skills better about riding smoothly in a group. 

Also some photos courtesy of my Dad (AndyRogersPhotography.co.uk).

The additional race and the final ride of the block was the London Academy Grand Prix 3rd|4th Cat race. This race is around the Olympic Velodrome and is described as a pure power circuit. Which will be interesting to see how that suits me in the 3|4. I should have the power to survive in the draft, but not sure what else will be possible. Also before going into detail want to give a quick shoutout to Sarah and Lou at London Academy who gave me some great tips on how to ride the circuit as well as Becky Hair.

However, the wind decided that wasn’t going to happen - along with a small crash (not involving me). The wind was theopposite direction to normal meaning that the small climb was really slow rather than gliding over it. 

So how did the race go? I survived about 20minutes in the group where I averaged 293w (312w NP meaning 1.07 VI).That shows how punchy the race was with 42 big efforts (defined as around 500w spikes) within the 20minutes. So I’m not surprised that I got dropped at that stage, but just shows chaotic the race was.

I don’t deny that I don’t help myself with lack of confidence in my bike handling skills compared to others. With the riders that I ride with being better technically and watching a lot of the national series, I presume everyone is like that, but in reality, I was having to hold myself back on the only hairpin of the lap, which was costing me a lot of energy. I was presuming others would realise that you didn’t need to brake (but they would) meaning that I was constantly losing all my speed that I could do by catching them up way too quickly round the corner. Yes, I would have been fine higher up the bunch, but I don’t currently have the power to hold it. The only time I made it close to the front, I got swamped immediately. 

With an improved FTP and repeated surge fatigue-resistance training, I think I could do well on the circuit. And while I didn’t get what I hoped for originally, I was absolutely delighted with holding 20 minutes in the group of a 3/4 race. 

That doesn’t even mention the thing that I’m most proud of. Racing will eventually mean you brush shoulders with people - and that happened with me. There was a crash at the front of the group in the middle of the apex and while I was going the tight “dive-bomb” approach each lap, people went left to avoid the rider on the ground and cut me off (completely reasonable and expected). I didn’t panic which is the main thing (didn’t slam the brakes) and then just warned the rider that I was on his left. Not ideal to be in that situation but I did it perfectly. 

The final 30minutes was one of the most brutal TTs that I’ve done. If the climb was difficult in the peloton, that was nothing compared to the solo effort. While there was less surges (only 26 in 30minutes using 400w+ as surges), that meant that I did a total of 68 in 50minutes. The solo effort being 258w average (266w NP) which showed how tired I was and how much the legs struggled from the effort. 

This certainly provides an idea of what kind of training I need to do. That said I know with an increased FTP, the race will be less surged-based as I am higher in the group.

To wrap up, I think this training/race block has been really productive. I smashed my perception of what I could do for 1minute (from 600w as most to almost 700w if paced consistently) on fresh legs. I’m edging closer to the 4w/kg FTP mark, with it being around 310w (at 78.9kg, so 3.92w/kg) at minimum. I’m consistently at 300w and finding that manageable even if the legs aren’t fresh which is a massive step - I’ve proved it wasn’t a one-off. I suspect that the next race blog will smash that but I’ve not been able to prove it yet. For context, I will be aiming to do 330w for a 30minutetime trial.

The biggest thing is that I am confident in my technical ability when racing able-bodied. I feel like I am not the worst in the any group I’ve been in and therefore once the power increased will be confident to race at the front of the bunch and not in people’s way.

This all happened while dealing with my ankle tendon flaring up which makes it even more impressive.  

The next block will be very interesting too because I plan to buy a track bike as I finish up my Accreditation and defend my place on the Paracycling Nat Series podium.