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Flanders training – time’s up…

flanders-flag-1410-pIt’s now just over a week until I ride the Flanders Sportive for the first time with Dave Arthur of Road.cc and David Alvarez of Stoemper Bikes.

By my standards, I’ve been putting in a big effort. So far this year, I’ve ridden over 1500km, something I’ve never achieved before by this time.  My lowest mileage in a week was in January at 54km and my highest was 223km in a week during February. I’ve also climbed over 18,000m so far this year to hopefully help me over the climbs of Flanders.

Frankly, I think I’m about as prepared as I can be. I’m expecting it to be a hard but memorable day. The weather is the big unknown and long range forecasts seem to be suggesting it’ll be cool but dry, which is a win as far as I’m concerned.

Whilst I’ve been trying to put in good amounts of short steep climbs, I’m sure Flanders will still grind me down on the day.

Right now I’m doing as close as I know to “tapering down”, reducing the mileage a bit and taking a bit more time off the bike before the big day. I’m doing a short ride tomorrow and may skip riding on the weekend to hang out with my family as I’ll be away from them all the following weekend. I have a couple of rides planned for next week but nothing too intense.

I’m really pleased with how much riding I’ve managed to do and I’m happy with the pace and heart rate zones considering the weather and the amount of climbing I’ve been trying to do. It’s been an excellent start to the year and will hopefully have given me a solid base for moving forwards through the year.

Obviously I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the Flanders experience and I think my TK3 (http://girodilento.com/kinesis-tk3-review/) deserves a damn good clean as it’s filthy.

Thanks for reading.