Hill training and achillies pain

I was reading through the Sustrans C2C guide last night and got a bit scared at the route profile. There are some huge climbs on route. Many off road. I live in one of the flattest parts of the UK and feel that I'm going to be totally unprepared for what lies ahead.

With this in mind I did a training session this morning that took in three big climbs. This is all relative as the longest climb was 143ft. C2C has climbs of around 1500ft over little more than a couple of miles but you've got to start somewhere and work with what you've got.

At the end of the ride my legs were shot and I was an ugly sweaty mess. My achillies is still aching too. I don't know what's wrong. The symptoms don't make sense. I need to go back to the doctors.

I'm riding the new bike in and out of Cambridge too this week which is going well and giving me another 30 minutes or so of training time a day.

I'm also mixing in a light free weight workout or two a week including cycle crunches which really hurt !!!

Trying not to push too hard as these are early days but I'm enjoying the training at the moment and starting to feel fitter already. Hopefully the last few pounds I'm trying to lose will drop off over the next few weeks too :)

1st week of training

After kicking off training on Sunday I've completed three training rides this week. It's felt really hard getting up at 6am two days this week and I'm aching more after each ride. 

Still it's been great fun once I've got out there. The going has definitely been very wet but that adds to the fun once you've been out for 10 minutes and got soaked. The technical riding has been great too. Finishing a ride off at 7am going through The Beast section of trail is an excellent way to start the day !

This morning I hit this standing water at speed which was a classic comedy moment when I discovered it swallowed my bike up to the wheel axles and was very close to throwing me off the bike. 

I'm going to have a rest over the weekend to give my tired body time to recover.

Panic training kick off!

Following dinner yesterday evening I made a spur of the moment decision to kick off my training for the C2C by going out for a gentle ride on my mountain bike in Thetford forest.

I said in my last post that I haven't riden for a year so planned to take it easy which I did until I decided to take in a lap of the red trail at High Lodge. Within minutes I was riding pretty much at maximum speed and sustained this until I got home 90 minutes later. This was not the ride I had planned but felt fantastic. I was totally destroyed and ached big time this morning but enjoyed it so much. I'm going to try to get a few more evenings in during the week between now and September.

To get some regular saddle time clocked up I'm going to start taking my bike to Cambridge in the car and ride in and out of the city each day. It's only a 6 mile round trip but won't do any harm. I did it for a while a few months ago but haven't recently as I damaged my achilles which was nothing to do with cycling.

This should do to start with along with a ride for a couple of hours over the weekends if I can squeeze it in.

I've also been shedding the pounds (10 lbs so far) which I need to do and will also help with the training.

Introduction

For quite a few years myself and my mate Aaron have ridden in the CLIC24 charity mountain bike enduro event. For about as long we've been talking about doing the UK Coast to Coast cycle route and have managed to put it off every year. This year sadly CLIC24 was not run so the time seemed right to have a crack at the C2C.

So we've booked some time off work in September and have decided to do the ride including the off road stages. We're planning to do it unassisted but have decided to stay in B&B's along the way rather than dragging a load of camping gear with us.

It's now just under 12 weeks until we set off and we've done no more preparation than booking the time off work. I've bought a new bike as my full suspension bike is not going to be the right tool for the job. We've not ridden since May last year. We're getting together in a few weeks for a weekend of riding and some planning.

On the to-do list at the moment is the following but I'm sure this is going to grow as we think through what we're committing ourselves to.

- How do we get to the start and back home again.
- Where are we starting from and finishing.
- Which route will we take.
- Day planning or wing it?
- Accomodation options along the way.
- Bike preparation.
- Training plan.
- What luggage will we need inc spares, nutrition, etc.
- Who can we contact if stuff breaks or things go wrong?
- Which charities will we be riding for?
- Have we bitten off more than we can chew?..............maybe!