UTokyo bicycle racing team

And so it's been quite a few years since I've done anything even remotely related to blogging, but here goes nothing.

After not cycling for almost a week, no thanks to dear 基礎演習, I was pretty much looking forward to this morning's training. Unfortunately, again no thanks to dear 基礎演習 and the danged 6000 word report, I had only around 2 hours of sleep. That, together with a rather draining training session, practically left me feeling dead for the rest of the day.

At the start of today's training, I took part in a TTT with Aramaki san, Miyazaki san and Arita san. Needless to say, they were too fast for me. I managed to hang on for around half of the 3 laps that we did this morning, pulling at the front for a fair bit as well, averaging around 40km/h or so. However, nearing the middle of the second lap, I was almost spent up and feeling very dehydrated. At the turning point, I couldn't catch up to the front 3, and found myself doing an ITT. Following which, I joined the rest of the year ones together with Ota san and Moriizumi san.

Some things that I've picked up from today: 1) I need to keep looking forward, not down even when I'm feeling exhausted. Apparently it helps. 2) I need to improve on my moving back from the front of the team to the back. I find myself facing a rather big gap when I get to the back wheel of the 3rd cyclist. All in all, it was a really effective (if not torturous) training session, and I think I'm getting faster and stronger, bit by bit. I'll try to apply what I've learnt today, pull for shorter periods of time and see how it affects my performance on Thursday - hopefully I'll be able to last longer.

On a completely separate and unrelated note, having a pigeon crash into your face when you're going at 40 odd km/h is not a very fun experience I must say - the only consolation being that it probably hurt more for the pigeon than me.