Day 26 Family Day

Wouldn't you believe it, today has been brilliant. Sunny warm, 25c with a relatively light wind, why couldn't that have been yesterday?

I relented yesterday evening, when the sun had already returned, and cleaned my bike which was just as well because even though I had 'over oiled' the drive chain before the race and it had rained so hard it was washed clean! By the time I went back to the bike the chain was already beginning to show rust!

I did 90 minutes on the bike this morning, more out of habit at the start, I must admit that somewhere around the ride I think I must have got a bit angry and for about 30 minutes really really pushed on quite hard. I did feel a bit better afterwards I think I just had to much too much energy left and then when I was riding along the quiet stretch of lane alongside the motorway I did a sprint, not really sure why but I did, then cruised back to the hotel.

When I downloaded my data I discovered that I had upped my threshold power, admittedly by only 3 watts but still an improvement and I had improved my peak power (sprint) by a massive 60 watts, the best power output I've ever done. Now if I wasn't sick before, you can imagine how that made me feel. But there's more, I rather foolishly looked at the result today and there was one chap 21 seconds (I think) off the front then a bunch sprint, of the guys in the top 6 I recognised 3 names of chaps that I have finished in front of in the last month!!!!!

Never mind I had a really nice dinner with my family last night and a great day today before delivering them to Brussels Midi railway station to allow them to catch the Eurostar train back to London.

I still I haven't decided whether to race or not tomorrow, I need to see how the weather goes and get myself psyched up for it. On the positive side it would be a shame to waste the 'form' I have cos I know it will evaporate all to quickly; on the negative side the race is about 45 minutes drive, doesn't start until 5.30pm and I need to leave for Amsterdam Schiphol airport at 5am on the following morning having dissembled and packed my bike and other stuff.

So we'll see about that, I'm just ready to go home now, to see my lovely wife and my three 'pups'.