April 2013 Review

Time for a quick update on how everything went last month cycling-wise:

January - 300km / 13hrs
February - 452km / 20hrs
March - 341km / 20hrs

April - 269km / 12hrs
Year to date - 1362km / 65hrs

In outright terms, it was my lowest month of the year for both mileage and hours on the bike. Obviously that's less-than-ideal given I'm supposed to be building to a couple of big upcoming races.

However, you might remember from my last training update that due to a few circumstances (mainly work & weather), I didn't ride the first half of the month at all.  So I managed to accumulate those figures in the last 14 days of April alone.

Given that, I'm actually pretty happy with what I achieved.  No point in dwelling on the time lost that was out of my control. In the time that I did have available, I managed to rack up some decent training, which is all good.

What's next

I'm a little unsure about what to do next.  Not training-wise - that's easy, I'm just going to smash myself with as many kilometres as I can squeeze in. I'll pile in some hard interval work, and hit up the weekend criteriums if I can get to them as well.

My indecision is about the Open races.  Once again, work has 'interfered' and I haven't ridden yet this month due to a work trip to Darwin. Nothing that could be helped, and it was actually a very positive work experience that I enjoyed and got a lot out of - but once again my training structure has taken a hit.

So what do I do? The Metro Champs road race is only 3 weeks away, and I'm not sure if I should enter or not.  Last year, I had a great almost-700km month of training up my sleeve leading into that race (and I still got smashed!).  This year, its a significantly less-impressive lead-up.

I'm torn between just entering it anyway and enjoying it as a hard training day (even if it ends up being mainly solo), or saving my money (both entry fee and petrol) and focus on the Lifecycle Classic in June as my first big Open race for 2013.

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here.  I'm still loving my cycling (whether its racing, training, or commuting).  Sure I'm a little frustrated that I'm not getting the time to lift my form to the level I'd like, but I'm OK with that as the time is being 'wasted' - its just not there to spend.

This might end up as one of those spur of the moment decisions I make just before entries close this Sunday night.  We'll see how I feel, especially if I can get some decent training in the rest of this week.

April goals

I really, really, really want to have a BIG MAY.  So far this year, I haven't had a huge month of training that I can look back on and think, "Yeah, that was a great month of quality, quantity, and consistency."

That'll be my driving force this month.  Making sure I get out onto the bike whenever the time is available.  The usual higher priority activities are there - my two kids are into the swing of their own sports seasons, plus my wife has a trip away mid-May as well.  But I reckon I can still utilise the time around that to rack up some serious mileage.

Here's hoping I can finally string 4 weeks together and start to approach some decent form!