Paracycling | Back-to-Back Podiums!

After doing the Para Nat Champs over the weekend of the 8th and 9th of June, the next block contained a few races, with the main focus being the next round of the Para Nat Series in Middlesborough (Round 4) on the 20th and 21st of July. 

While the focus was on increasing endurance during the six week period, the main focus was actually making changes to the bike - which took longer than I planned, but it was worth it. The changes we made focused on efficiency, something I certainly didn’t have at the Nat Champs. See the photo below for further proof. 

So the following changes were made:

1. New cranks (172.5mm to 165mm).

2. Drop the saddle 14mm.

3. New saddle

4. Increased gearing (50t to 52t big ring).

5. New tyres (after flat-spotting my previous ones)

This now makes it possible for me to ride in an aero position for the whole ride (either on the hoods or in the drops). The biggest thing is that this is only the start of the aerodynamic transformation. The bike isn’t slammed, and the stem didn’t get extended; therefore, I can still get more efficient with training.

As I mentioned when talking about my focus for this block, the bike focus was on increasing endurance. In reality, with the changes to the bike and holiday, I’ve not ridden anymore and probably ridden slightly less than I was. However, the rides I’ve been doing have been much better.

I did one local chaingang on really bad legs - and it was horrible weather so it was only three of us. I surprised myself by holding the two other riders for 29mins17secs which was 270w average (284w NP) and then followed by 22mins at 226w (240w NP). The legs were destroyed and needed a break.

After the bike fit and putting the bike in the shop, I planned to race the Via Crit Cat 3/4 races on the 22nd June. However, life doesn’t always go to plan with my foot hurting, I decided to DNS. This is something where I think a few years ago, I’d have continued and potentially done some damage - so I’m happy I knew my limit. It was also not a para nat series event and therefore the purpose was more about fun. So I did an hour at tempo instead which allowed me to test the bike fit. Small sample size, but the L/R power balance (45.6/54.4) was more abnormal - which is something I’m happy about. In order to get more efficient, I need to use my right leg more. 

This trend continued for my other tempo rides (46.3/53.7), where I did 48 minutes in the drops, setting a new PB for my training route by over 2 minutes! It had a bit more power (230w average, 250w NP), but it was more related to fitness and aerodynamic gains.

With the third ride, which focused even more on aero gains where I rode on the hoods for as long as I could - which was 20 minutes! It’s weird coming off the bike with the arms absolutely dying and the legs feeling fairly good, but that just shows the progress I need to make to be more efficient in the future. The effort itself was 271w (278w NP) with an L/R power balance of 45.7/54.3, which was around the FTP level. While the effort wasn’t exactly on hilly terrain, I averaged 33.6kph into a crosswind and then a strong headwind. 

To finish off the ride I wanted to test my legs utilising the tailwind to see how quick I could go up my local climb. The climb is 700m long with an average of 2.4%, peaking at 6.2%. Unsurprisingly, the KOM is 1:06 and I went in with my PB being set on the previous ride at 1:28 (smashing the PB which was 1:43). I then did 1:17! The 77second effort being 436w average, but the total effort was 105seconds at 402w average (437w NP). I’d be interested to see how much faster I can get if I do the effort fresh and now know when the segment starts.

With two weeks to go and a holiday, I decided it was time to go some longer efforts and joined my local group ride on a rainy, windy day! The ride goes into the hills and while they aren’t big, they do require a decent effort. The ride was a total of 110km (120km in total), which took just over 4 hours, with the average power being 162w (214w NP). Something that I was delighted with, but also knew that if I fuelled correctly that, I could have gone a lot harder. 

The final ride before my holiday (and race at the Solihull 2/3/4) was an endurance tempo ride - again, another horrible rainy day. I decided to do a different route to normal - which was a big mistake. The target was 3hours at around 220-230w with attacking the climbs, but after being stopped at the train tracks for 3 minutes (!!!), I got a bit frustrated but continued my effort. The first climb was a 2min25second effort at 367w (396w NP) felt good and also sustainable back to the pre-planned “under” effort of 230w. 

The second route mistake was going on the local A road, it was one climb followed by a downhill before turning right - luckily the turning right was easy. The effort on the road was just under 6minutes at 324w (333w NP).

The third effort was 2mins22seconds at 352w (355w NP) which again felt good. 

I, then, turned onto another A-road so did another big effort just under 4mins (3mins52secs) at 315w (333w NP). This effort was all downhill, but even so it felt difficult.

The final effort was just over 30mins at 230w (248w NP), giving a total effort of 1hour43mins at 233w (260w NP).

But that underestimates the effort a lot… I got close, matched or smashed my best power from 3minutes to 30minutes. The 30min effort being 269w but a massive 300w NP, with the 40min effort being 291w NP. It was my 5th highest 1 hour effort and 2nd best 90min going by average power which says more about the type of efforts I did before, but still shows great success.

This training block finished with two sets of races, the first being the Solihull CC 2/3/4 and the final one being the Para Nat Series Round 4 in Middlesborough (a crit and a TT). 

Solihull CC 2/3/4 was my second ever road race (I did one when I was 16) and, therefore, the objectives were focused on understanding what I need to know when I’m strong enough to compete. The race went wrong from the start, mainly because when I entered, I didn’t realise it was a 2/3/4. Unsurprisingly, 2/3/4 races are mainly Cat 2s and Cat 3s (who know they are strong enough) and then people like me who didn’t realise what they signed up for. 

So the objectives were:

• Survive the Neutral Zone in the group

• Learn about road racing craft

So how did it go? First off, thank you to Laura Davies for telling me to fight for position in the neutral zone. So, I lined up where I could be in the first row and then suddenly I was last row by the time we started properly moving. So that was lesson 1 learnt. 

Lesson 2 was about picking the correct wheel to follow and I didn’t do that. As expected, when the flag dropped the leaders sprinted and then stopped peddling. Which gives people at the back (me) two options 1) Sprint and brake or 2) Pedal and hope the move isn’t too sustained. Unfortunately for me, the rider in front was full on sprinting and then slamming the brakes so it didn’t really matter what I did as I was also having to brake hard.

Lesson 3, slightly more light-hearted, maybe don’t over-do the ride that the paramedics ask if you are okay. My foot seized up meaning that I couldn’t put any pressure on it so dramatically put the bike down and then fell on the floor afterwards. It is really frustrating that it seized up and limited my effort I could do, but Able-bodied racing is for fun and not for results.

So how did the race effort generally go? I did 30mins at 288w NP which I’m frustrated it was only that but given everything, that wasn’t too bad. On a good day, I should be able to do 300w+ for an hour but that will come.

The effort I did within the group and then solo at a big effort was just over 16minutes at 275w average (307w NP). The stop-start nature of bunch racing meant that it was never going to the highest I could do.

I think if my foot didn’t seize up, I think I would have been happy with the output and just said it was bad legs. The good news is that while it wasn’t intense riding, I was still able to ride to/from the race HQ to the finish line to watch the rest of the race (and the women’s). That’s something I’ve never done before. So that is always positive news out of it.

Main Objective | Para Nat Series Round 4

Onto the Para Nat Series Round 4 in Middlesborough and the main objective of this training block. The Crit race was an hour long and the TT was 20km. For the crit race, the objective was to beat Becca Newark - Becca was the person I tried to follow the wheel of in the Nat Champs and couldn’t. So, being a bit stronger and the bike more racey, I thought that she was a good person to try and beat. 

The tactic for the race was to repeat Round 2’s strategy of getting Chris off the front. The reasoning behind this is that it is better for me if people can’t follow his moves as while others have W/KG advantage, Chris also has significant Watts advantage and I can’t follow his moves even in the wheel - but others can. This plays into the second objective, which is to survive the group formation (which should take between 5 and 20 minutes) and hope that it calms down to survive the majority of the race in the group. 

Onto race day and the start list was a lot of people who I think I should be able to compete with in Round 5 (Devon) and the course wasn’t too technical (for me, as it was a clockwise course) but did have a small drag up from the bottom hairpin.

Lap 1 was the target lap to try and get Chris off the front and with two hairpins on the course I knew those were the two chances. With everyone wanting to be on the front row and, as a result, I got squeezed out from the start so that ruined the first hairpin. As we got onto the back straight, the race was very tactical which gave me the chance to go on the attack. Going on the attack was good for a few reasons; 1) If I was at the back on the main hairpin, I was not making the front group. 2) If I made the first move, then I would be in the front group. 3) It meant that I could lead out Chris and hopefully he would go solo. 

The attack was pretty obvious, one I had to clear my approach (luckily they were both called Ben) and then I shouted for Chris to follow. This goes with my tactic for lap 1 of wanting Chris off the front - but even more so that if Chris isn’t in the move, the move is going nowhere. The attack was actually really quite powerful, the speed difference was over 5km/h as they were slowing down and I put in a 7second effort at over 800w (not massive for most but was enough for my 9th best ever 5 second sprint). My attack created an eight person group once all the initial attacks had happened.

I was clearly the weakest in the group and, therefore, was the last wheel which was a mistake with Josh being a punchy, less-technical rider than me (especially on right-handers where my impairment doesn’t affect me) meant that I was constantly going into the red to stay on his wheel. Eventually, I got dropped which lead to the fun tactics of paracycling where lapped riders can sit on so you don’t want to TT flat out because you will get caught and then dropped. So I normally put in a decent effort to see if a rider in front blows up and then start looking behind me to see when the next opportunity to get on their wheels is.

After the leaders went past to lap me, I noticed that Miriam (a fellow C5 rider) was just behind me and that I'd need to be ready for a full on attack. Which happened, but she later said that it was just her normal speed up the climb - which shows the difference between a punchy rider and me. We were, then, joined by Ben Hetherington, by a rider who lapped us who was forced to pace us the whole way. Ben is amazing TTer and, therefore, can set a rapid pace on the front while myself and Miriam sat on his wheel. The dynamic was an interesting one because we (myself and Miriam) aren't allowed to take turns with him and while both of us could have gone quicker up the drag, we couldn’t have been able to stay away from him on the flat. Which neutralised our little battle until the lead group lapped us. 

When that happened, I did a max sprint to get onto their wheels to get towed for as long as I could keep up. The problem for me was that the lap counter was out and therefore it was very quick with constant attacks happening. The final wheel of the group was Ben Payne who is an ideal rider to follow for me - not the biggest punch so will drag you back into the group. Ben’s the wheel I’m going to try and stay on at the next round. In the end, I got dropped which lead to a race between myself and Ben Hetherington (who had Miriam on his wheel) and I just had to go for a maximal flat out effort. 

What I hadn’t realised is that Finn had a puncture meaning that I got 2nd in C5 (and 8th overall)! My first ever individual accomplishment in sport outside of club/school cricket! But I felt I had more even though I ticked off both my objectives by forcing the split and the beat Becca in the process. Tracking power in group racing is always a fun one. The first 17mins20secs were at 279w average (298w NP) but I was feeling it with the attacks. The VI (Variability Index, which is NP divided by average) was 1.07 and I don’t deal with that very well. I’m very much more of Time Trialist who can just hold a pace - which takes us onto Sunday’s TT.

Onto the TT, the course is a single 20km loop for everyone which is good. I’ll be able to get an understanding of my race pace compared to everyone and how much the (lack of) TT bikes effects my results. The TT is false-flat downhill with a few lumps with a kick at the end (3% for 500m) so should be good fun with pacing being important. 

The objective for the race will be to hold the aero position for the whole race which should be around the 37-38minute mark (presuming I can hold 20mph/32kph). 

The race went wrong from the start, the pace I was expecting to hold didn’t align with the wattage target of 280w and didn’t really get better when my body wasn’t a fan of all the new nutrition plan I started the day before (first time having carb-mix and also second time having electrolytes). So much so that if it was an Able-bodied race, I probably would have DNSed. The warm up wasn’t great either, legs weren’t feeling the worst ever, but they were feeling the race yesterday whenever I tried to put small burst of effort. 

However as soon as I got going, I was flying! The Power meter wasn’t working for the first 30-40seconds which was fun trying to workout if it was just disconnected or dead - the battery was running out. I got it going eventually and then started to pace around 280w as I planned to do with efforts around 320w when going slightly uphill to keep the pace going.

After about 10mins, I was feeling really comfortable with the normalised power at 285w, but knew the climbs were going to be starting soon so aimed to keep it around there.

The first climb took me around 20seconds at 380w before another 3mins30sec effort at around 280w NP which was a 30second effort at around 415w. The biggest thing for me was that I was realising that 280w felt like recovery pace. I was able to put in decent efforts uphill and then continue at 280w without feeling it.

As we got to more rolling terrain, I could up the power and again it felt sustainable and at this point I realised I had way more left in the tank than I could possible use. I finished the race and was still feeling like I’d not gone anywhere near to being flat out. The final effort (just under 15mins) of undulating climbs was at 314w average (321w NP) which can be split into before the big climb and the climb. With an effort of 11mins40seconds at 304w (313w NP) showing a clear increase of effort from the 285w NP effort from the first part of the TT.

Perhaps the bigger point was that because of the nature of the course 285w NP to start meant I was doing 37.1kph (23.1mph) while the second split was at 35.6kph (22.1mph) meaning that the pacing plan clearly was a good choice of doing a negative split. However, I think I could have probably pushed closer to 325w NP for the second split and still not affected my climbing split. The climbing split being a 2min57sec effort at 356w (352w NP). 

So the negative-split pacing plan went perfect if you don’t account for my legs being so much better than expected. The legs were that much much better than I expected that I was very confident I could have beaten my time for the lap if I repeated the course immediately after. But why did the pacing plan go wrong? Essentially, I did my best numbers ever (PB!!!) for 30minutes (296w, beating my previous PB of 295 set in March 2016!!!). My 20min power was my 2nd best ever (305w / 314w NP) which contained my 5th best ever 10min power (316w / 318w NP) and 7th best ever 5min (332w / 334w NP) as the effort got ramped up to finish the TT. This is what I mean by my legs being amazing! 

I’m hoping that this is the glass ceiling smashed and I can continue to work at around 300w regularly, even if it isn’t as comfortable as it felt in the TT. But this is where FTP isn’t the be-all metric that some think it is because I’m very much a diesel in that I can sustain it in a TT environment but struggle to match it when in a crit/chaingang because of the sprints during the effort. However, I’m absolutely delighted with the progress shown and can’t wait to see what I’ll be able to do during my next block. 

Talking about my next block, I’ll have a few goals including Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the track accreditation. I have Cambridge Crit 3/4 race on the 25th August which I hope to survive in the group as long as possible and then have back-to-back race weekends to finish up the Paracycling National Road Series in Devon (14th-15th September) and then York (21st-22nd September).

As always to finish off… FTP is around 300-310w at 79kg meaning W/kg of 3.80-3.92w/kg range. Which means that I ticked off the first of my fitness goals (300w) and am very close to ticking off the 2nd which was 4w/kg FTP!