It’s always great to welcome new clients, particularly those who are coming into cycling as a sport which is new to them. The spirit of adventure which humans have always had can sometimes appear to have been obscured a little in this age of technology and instant reward: how nice, therefore, that the (usually!) pleasant pastime of riding a bike can throw up challenges so severe as to motivate individuals to find their physical and mental limits…..
The Etape du Tour is one such challenge and this year Rod Archibald and Tom Sandifer are attempting the event with coaching from BlackCat. Both these young men are also being ably supported by their employer, Canterbury Chartered Accountancy firm Burgess Hodgson http://www.burgesshodgson.co.uk/ . How many other employers would provide the opportunity for staff members riding this type of event to design their own kit and then have it made for them? It’s great to see a firm who are committed to supporting their employees in this way!
Rod and Tom are relatively new to cycling and I first met Rod back in Autumn 2012 when another of my clients referred him to me for a test and some training advice. Rod plays hockey for his home town of Canterbury and has a “can do, will do” attitude towards physical exertion. He loves training and is very competitive. He and Tom will be riding the Etape together but are coming from slightly different places physically and, therefore, have different training programmes. Tom needs to build his engine (not shoddy in the first place at over 320 watts for a 3 min max effort on the Wattbike) in preparation for a long event but, like most people, has limited time to train. Solution? Lots of intensive endurance work: sub-threshold but hard enough to be super-tough for 2-3 hour blocks. Sweetspot, Tempo, Z3….etc etc it’s all in the same ball-park. Working with time-poor clients I have consistently found that this approach gets the best results. Rod, too, needs endurance training but he has an added goal of road racing this year so has to also work on more explosive efforts. As an example, Rod has a dedicated session including 30s-3 min efforts at full-gas, as well as including 10-20s sprints in his longer rides. Rod has some impressive power, too, having recently improved his w/kg figure to 5.3 with a 3 min max Wattbike test topping 360 watts. There is more to come from both these guys – please watch the blog for posts of their progress.
Tom and Rod share an office and get on really well….however, when they tested together there was a lot of good-natured ribbing about who pulled the best faces during the 3 min test…pics of Rod show he may well have won this one! Or did he?? Newly updated pics of Tom show he can suffer too!!
theblackcatscyclingwhiskers 