Racing again

People always say that big personal events like moving house, having kids and a new job effects your training. Well, I've become part of that list and it *has* effected me. It's effected me in a good way. It's given me time to assess various elements of my life: family, career and cycle racing. Deciding what's important is a exercise we should all do every now and then. Re-aligning imbalances after assessment gets you focused again.

So, where my career might have been way down on the priority list (previously), now with a 'new' and exciting job my career has climbed back up into serious importance. Something has to give. My cycle training has reduced in intensity and volume. So, like my new strap line suggests 'train smart, race well', I'll be more wise in how I prepare for events. For example, instead of wanting to win every weekend, I'll be looking at my calendar and hand-picking events that I *can* win and *can* train effectively for.

Last week I spent some time (holiday) in Cornwall with my family. Amongst other things it was a great time to get back on my bike and enjoy my riding again while putting in some good miles. During the week I managed to get out on the bike most days although never roding for more than four hours a day (except one of the days) so kept them relatively short and enjoyable.

This week I raced at Hillingdon (Mid-week criterium race), a Surrey League (SL) handicap road race and will be racing today at 1.30pm (SL road race, Ockley). It's good to be racing again, but I need to control how much I do i.e. one mid-week race a week plus a weekend race fortnightly.

Looking ahead, I've got two NPS cross country mountain bike races and a couple of road races. So, while my career is very important to me I'll get back road racing and believe I've found a way to achieve all my life's elements in perfect harmony and appropriate proportion.