What to do?

As many of you will know, my main goal of the season is to qualify for the age-related UCI World Championships Road Race. I do this via the Tour of Cambridgeshire, which usually takes place every June. This year the race had been due to take place in June, but in early spring due to the ongoing pandemic, was delayed to September.

On Thursday, I received the email that many people did, that the Tour of Cambridgeshire was cancelled for the second year running and would now take place in 2022. Immediately, like many others, I felt gutted, but perfectly understood the reasons why. So, what do you do when your main goal is shelved and you’re left in priority 1 race withdrawal?

There are of course many options on what to do, but I want to discuss the option I’ve settled on, because - for me - it’s the way forward. There are no right and wrong answers for this, everyone is unique and will have different ways of dealing with such issues.

For me, once the initial disappointment of the Tour being off was over, I needed to know how I would rectify the remaining part of my season. I understand that my fitness level is a journey. A journey where I continually strive to be the best version of me at that point in time. By best — I mean my highest fitness level.

My fitness can change on a regular basis and I can aim to keep pushing it up. Obviously, I can’t keep pushing it up ad infinitum as otherwise I’d be a pro cyclists by now! However, I can make changes to various aspects of my fitness on a regular basis. And, of course, like many other people I’ve had years in the past where I’ve not trained to the same level as I have last few years and was therefore, less fit than I am now.

This year I was hoping to have added a further 10W to my FTP over last years FTP. Currently, I’m about 7W better than last year (so very much on track to be there by September). Next year I would have liked another 5W. There are other metrics that are important to my Tour of Cambridge ability such as my MAP, my weight, and my anaerobic reserve power (FRC or W’). These are all progressing nicely.

With this in mind, and with the knowledge that I’ll no doubt take part in other races this year (which would have been training races for the ToC) I’ll be aiming to push these metrics up so that I continue to work on my fitness. Then for 2022, I’ll aim to push them up again, and again in 2023 etc.

This long-term desire to keep improving my fitness, while not as exciting as actually doing a race, is still motivating for me. Even if I feel I can’t continue to improve I’ll work on maintaining my metrics so that I slow the inevitable age-related decline in fitness.

I’ve mentioned some of the metrics I’ll be looking at to see how I’m going, but additionally, I like to also keep a check of my stamina. For this I like to see how long I can maintain a high average power without it dropping off significantly. I’ll do this on outdoor rides where I compare 15-minute blocks of work and make sure they’re within 5 or 10W of each other, but I’ll do this by seeing how I compared when I complete long MIET style efforts up a long climb (usually indoors).

For my FTP, I’m looking to increase this year on year, until I can’t. While for my FRC (or W’) I’m aiming to maintain it, and for my MAP to get it as high as I can over (within the last decade of my riding). I don’t feel I can get my MAP as high as I managed in my 20s (which was ~30 years ago).

For the Tour of Cambridgeshire, I wasn’t looking to do much work on my sprint power. It was highly unlikely that qualification (for me at least) would have had anything to do with sprinting ability. Of course, the races that are left on the calendar now may well have something to do with sprinting, so I’ll have to do some sprint training now to see what I can do in that area.

For other riders who were due to compete in the Tour of Cambridgeshire I’m hoping that you can find some other events to do, or like me you can use the idea of pushing yourself on, with some other races as a way forward.

Let me know what you decide to do. It’d be great to hear how you all cope with it.