September

September has been a funny month, mostly because August and July didn't go exactly as planned.

Late July, I was feeling rather pleased with my form (which could have been described as 'coming along nicely')  when I developed a very sore knee after doing a long, hilly ride in the pouring rain. Although I later reduced my training, it wasn't enough to make the pain go away completely and so I used the 3 weeks I spent in New York, visiting Sri Chinmoy to completely lay off the bike and see what happened.

Despite being pretty frustrated by being unable to ride, and the knee still being sore, I was able to enjoy my time there and took some positive advice from my friend and masseur Uddipan Brown who told me he thought my pelvis was misaligned which could be the cause of my knee pain, or at least it wasn't helping.

On returning to the UK I immediately phoned a local Osteopath and 5 minutes later (literally) I was in his consulting room and was encouraged to learn that my twisted pelvis (Uddipan was right!) shouldn't prove too difficult to fix.

In addition to the good work of my Osteopath, I re-checked my shoeplates and found a little adjustment made a huge difference. Now a few weeks have passed and I am happy to be able to resume training with an eye towards the UK Cyclo-cross season which has almost started. Although I am not where I would like to be fitness-wise, my plan is to take it steady, and to 'give a good account of myself' in all the races I enter. There's nothing worse that doing a 'cross race when you're unfit!

My training is currently a mix of the schedules mentioned in Lance's performance programme book, Simon Burney's great book and my own memories and training journals from my junior days (when I last raced with any seriousness). The big change now is that I do many more zone 1 recovery rides with my Heart Rate Monitor when neccessary, and so I tell myself things like,'...go easy, you're not racing today, you're racing Sunday, you can go flat out then, when your legs will take it, so give yourself a chance for then.'

I also use it for commuting and so try not to get involved in the 'commuter burn ups' that invariably take place to and from work (at least, not on my rest days...).

October

It’s funny, but this entry does feel a lot like it’s going to mirror the last one!

Although, I have raced at least! The constant nagging of my club mate Richard has borne fruit and I entered two hill climbs and what’s more, I managed to finish them without getting off my bike and walking (always a good thing for a racing cyclist). I’ve written an article called  ‘A Tale of Two Hill Climbs’ which tells the story.

Having decided to call off my assault on the winter cyclo-cross season, the plan is to take it steady through the winter and compete in Time Trials through 2006 with an eye towards next winter’s ‘cross season. Ah well, I can but try.

I’ve been seeing a variety of sports and physio-type people in an effort to resolve my on-going knee pain, as yet without complete success. A gentle week of commuting 20 minutes each way each day seems to be strengthening it, but training rides of even sub 2 hours seem to inflame it. So I guess I’ll have to forget about riding on the weekends and see if that makes it go away…