Training Camp Day 2 - 29th Jan 2012, Sunday
Today's training ride began at 5am with an easy ride with Vincent. I could not sleep the previous night because of the road rash and soreness on my right side, so I decided to heck it and just join him for the ride since I was already half awake. It was cold and dark when we came out. As usual, plastic bags are very useful when it comes to fighting the wind. Just a simple plastic bag in the jersey on the chest will do the job. We rolled off and soon after, Psssssssssssssssssst, and Vincent had a flat. We did a quick change and carried on.
The morning ride was really special. Initially there were street lamps along the main road. As soon as we turned into the small road, it was total darkness. You-cannot-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face kind of darkness. Fortunately, Vincent had blinkers for me. To be honest, I was quite scared initially. I could not see s***, but Vincent taught me how to navigate with the white line at the side of the road. Soon enough, I adapted to the darkness and it was actually quite special riding in the dark. After 2 hours, we rendezvous with the rest of the team outside the hotel lobby for the scheduled 7am 'DOI SUTHEP' ride.
The plan was to do 4 sets up and down and I taught it was quite crazy. The first set up I was struggling. I just could not find a tempo but I just stuck to them and tried to find a rhythm. The second half of the climb became better! My legs just came and I could make some good efforts, especially on the steeper sections;). The first set up was 34mins to the temple, pretty descent I must say. The descend was awesome as usual, just tried to get accustom to cornering and taking good lines. The second set up was more torturous as all our legs were getting heavy, but it was still some good climbing with some small accelerations from each of us. I like!
The second descend was interesting as I had Vincent filming me! I wanted to follow his line as he can descend much better and I taught I can learn something from there. But he told me to go ahead, with me unaware that he was video-ing the descend! Crazy man descending with one hand filming! Can you imagine?
All in all, it was a good 5.5 hours ride, covered about 125km, with 2 times Doi Suthep. We were all reaching the point of diminishing returns, so we will save the other reps for the latter part of training.
2nd part of training commences at 330pm. We concluded AM session at about 1130am, so about 4 hours of good rest before some fierce motorpacing cum leadout cum sprint session. The plan was to rotate the leadout train and the sprinter. So the motor will bring us up to speed and then we will leadout for 1km for a dedicated sprinter. In the end, we were all tired from the morning training and only did a sprint each, with leadouts for other members. It was good hard efforts and I felt I really need this sort of training to improve my higher end watts. Way to go! The session lasted for about 1 hour 40mins.
Training today was awesome and I really felt that the training camp has started! Looking forward to the rest of the training week.
Now, to the dining table! A plus!
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