June

This past month has been a rather quite time in terms of racing and formal team requirements.
I completed my first half of the season (January to June) at the Kremetart cycle race. Thereafter the team was given the month off of racing in order to prepare for the second half of the season (July to December)

When I say ‘off’ it doesn’t mean we were given the opportunity to let our bikes gather some dust for a change. It only meant that for the rest of the month we had no racing on our team calendar.

Following Kremetart I actually did hang up my cycling shoes for a few days and then returned to base period in my training. (Base period is the first period in training where one focuses more on quantity than quality.)

My first week in Base period was slightly tougher than usual with the extremely cold weather we had up here in Gauteng. Everyday on the bike I asked myself the same question over and over - am I really gaining fitness from this or am I just fooling myself. For me it felt as if I was going out on my bike to torture myself. After hardly an hour on the bike my muscles started to get sore from all the contractions to keep them warm which only resulted in me taking double the time to cover the same distances.

Luckily the frosty spell was soon over and I could get back to some proper training without too many layers of clothing.
A small training camp in warmer climes was also well worth the travel and a few days of riding in sunny conditions was all my muscles needed to thaw out a bit.

At first it didn’t really bother me not having a month ‘off’ but now I cant think of not having at least one month a year to recover mentally and physically from racing weekend after weekend.

I truly enjoyed the whole of June, I feel fresh and excited for the new season ahead of me.
My first weekend back into racing will be on the 17th and 18th where I will be competing at the XCO National championships in Pretoria and the Walkerville mountain bike challenge respectively.