Kneeling before the Dragon

Its about time I updated the blog again with the training leading up to the last Sportive ride.

After the positive impetuous of the second Sports test the training continued with renewed vigour with only a month to the Dragon Ride and prime reason behind all the training......The Maratona des Dolomites.

The Endurance fat burning sessions which had helped me loose all the weight until now were reduced in duration in  favour of more Threshold sessions to help build prolonged power and simulate hill climbs.
For the uninitiated, threshold sessions are also known as Fartlek or interval training, designed to encourage your body to become more accustomed to performing at a higher anaerobic level for increasingly longer periods.
To obtain threshold meant increasing my physical effort to achieve a 154 to 164bpm heart rate. Although during the sessions I found I could easily reach 168bpm without negative effects from lactic acid build-up.
The threshold interval was then maintained for 5 minutes initially with 1 minute recovery between intervals. This would be repeated 5 times increasing to 8.
Longer intervals were then introduced from 8 to 12 minutes with 2 and 3 minutes recovery respectively.

Overall I tried hard to maintain the level of training required, but it was difficult with the poor weather conditions in May and the beginning of June. Threshold training in the wet conditions is always tricky with a higher risk of a fall on fresh mud and gravel washed onto the roads.

Even though Threshold training can simulate hills, I'd previously discovered there was no substitute for the real thing and steeper hill climbing utilises different parts of the leg muscles not always exercised during interval training.
In theory my training should of been enough but I didn't feel confident in my own hill climbing ability before the Dragon Ride, so to avert some of my nervousness I arranged a few longer rides with more climbing around Edgehill.
Without doing too much distance the best I could achieve was just over 1000 meters (3280ft) of lower intensity climbing covering 60 miles. This was well short of the expected 3300 meters and 200km of the Dragon Ride Grando Fondo route, even the Medio route was more than this, but it gave me more confidence.


It was now a few days before the Welsh Dragon Ride and a major test of whether I was physically and mentally strong enough. I admit I was nervous, it had been 2 years since I'd ridden such a tough sportive.
Only time would tell................I decide to tackle the Grand Fondo.