No training today.

Didn't have time to train today as I had to take the hire car back this morning then I had a 4.5 mile walk home after dropping it off. To be honest it was really wet so training wouldn't have been too productive anyway. Apparently it is dry tomorrow so I will go to the track tomorrow.

I found a reasonably priced pro cruiser frame today so I bought it to try. If it is too small then I can build it up for my son to ride.

Here is a picture.

It looks a little rough but I have a friend who can get it resprayed and restickered at a reasonable price which I may go for next month. Or I may get a new yess frame in a couple of months. I am not too sure yet.

When the frame is resprayed I am thinking of darkish blue and white stickers like this.

I have been talking with my son and he would like to race cruiser this season so I need to look for a bike for him ASAP. It looks like a pro will be too big for him as he is only 4ft 9 inches at the moment and a pro is from 5ft 2ins up to 5ft 8inches.

I am looking at the moment to see what expert cruser frames are about as I think that I can get some wheels from someone at the club who is lokking to swap some 24x1 1/8 cruser wheels for some wheels that I have spare here at home so I will find out on Saturday if he wants to swap or not.

I have also been looking at when racing starts again and I have 39 days until the first SW race so I need to start training properly to get in shape.

As it is raining loads at the moment I might swap track sessions for circuit/ HITT training as it may yeald more results. I am going to try sprints tomorrow in the wet to see if they are safe or not.

Gates

Did gates yesterday and after the 3rd or 4th one I was feeling good on the dialled StayStrong.

The new bars, cranks and forks feel really good.

I have not been able to ride today as I had to travel for a funeral tomorrow. I did a weighin and I am 102.30 kgs so not great but not too bad.

Got my 20" back

The StayStrong is back from the shop with all its new bits on and it is looking good. I had to get some new bars as the ones that came with it were twisted so I decided as I was getting it right I might as well get bars now too.

I went for ciari crossbow bars http://www.crucialbmxshop.com/ciari-crossbow-bars.html they look good. The new front wheel and the 20mm forks look great too as do the cranks.

I will add some photos tomorrow.

I left the s&m to have a service ready for the race next weekend so I am going to ride the 20" for the week to see how I get on.

First Basketball game of the year.

Played my first Basketball game of the year and felt good. My lateral movement has got so much better and I am feeling much quicker and more agile.

I have changed my plans for tomorrow as there are no gates so I am going to try and get my bike back and drop off the cruiser for a service.

Quick Session today

Had a mad dash home from work and then off to the track to get a bit of a workout in before it got dark.

Managed to do 15 first straights with sprints back up the start hill so not too bad. My manuals are getting better as well after the training at the weekend.

Didn't go to gates as my son was ill.

I rode my DK to work today as well but I don't really like it so I am going to sell it again as I need room and money for my future projects.

I have sold my son's mountain bike too as he has only used it 4 times in a year so it was just taking up much needed space at home. The money from it will pay for the Yess Type X frame that arrived today too :-)

I am going to store the Yess frame for now as I want to ride the Dialled bike for a while and get used to it. I then plan to build up the Yess and keep the Dialled as my commuter/park/pump track bike.

I am planning to sell my mountain bike in a couple of months and buy a Yess cruiser frame with a shorter top tube for racing and I want to keep my S&M bike as my training bike and keep the yess for gates and races.

Changed up training

We have decided to change up our training this week. We are going to do gates Tuesday and Thursday this week at Burnham on sea to get some more track time in and also get used to the track for the race later in the season.

Wednesday I am going to be playing basketball so I will get some more exercise in. Hopefully this weekend I can get to the Bristol track to get some laps in as well.

Getting there.

Had a really good training session yesterday with the club coach. We worked a lot on gates and sprints and then worked on manuals and jumping. My manuals got much better and I managed to jump the big tabletop which I haven't been able to jump since my crash.

This morning I weighed myself and I am down to 102.68 kgs which is good.

Dylan Video edit

I an unofficial weigh in this morning and I am down to 103.00 kgs which is a move in the right direction. Hopefully this will have dropped more after my training tomorrow and Pilates and training on Saturday as well. The weight loss is not going as well as I had hoped but I think that this is due to increased muscle mass as my legs are getting more and more defined and my stomach is definitely getting smaller by the day.

Made a little video edit of the training session from Sunday where my Son learnt to jump the tabletop on the last straight at Bath.

Also my moov now 2 arrived this morning. I haven't had time to open it yet so I will do this either tomorrow or at the weekend and put a video and photos up here. I have also found my go pro so I will video my manual attempts and sprints and make them into a a couple of videos to add to youtube and here as a record of training. I will also add the results of my spring timing as well.

Great session today

Had a great session at the track today. The sun was shining the track was semi dry and running pretty quick compared to the weekend.

I decided to do full laps this morning to make the most of the sunny dry conditions so I did a warm-up of one pump lap followed straight after with a lap peddling everything. I then did 6 x full speed full laps with 4 minutes rest in between. After this I decided to practice manual-ing the first jump. I did a set of 10 then rested for 5 minutes and then did 10 more. By the end of the last 20 my legs were gone so I stopped.

I was really happy with my progress out of the 20 runs 10 of the manuals I got the front wheel over the face of the jump an 10 I cased on top. Out of the 10 where the front wheel made it over 5 of those were perfect smooth manuals where I gained speed. It is the first time since I built up the S&M that I have been able to cleanly manual the first jump so I am stoked and have everything crossed that the next session I do not regress again.

Tomorrow is a rest day so I cleaned the bike and stored it ready for Friday.

Unfortunately I found out when I got to the track that the pockets on my race pants are smaller than the pockets on my shorts so my phone didn't fit! This meant that I couldn't measure my times or speed with Strava. Also I can't find my camera so I couldn't film the manuals either which is annoying.

I keep forgetting to mention that I am still keeping up with drinking Lime Juice in the morning and drinking at least 3 litres of water a day. I also haven't had any fizzy drinks this year so going well.

Training rethink

Last night I was having a re think about my training and I have decided that I am going to have Tuesdays and Thursdays as my rest days as I ride all weekend so need at least 2 rest days a week. I am going to do a minimum of sprints on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays although on the weeks that I am working lates I will also do track training as well. On Saturdays we have gates so that is excellent training and on Sunday so I plan to either go to Bristol to do full laps in the morning and then a pump track in the afternoon or race. I am also thinking that Tuesday and Thursdays we can do manual training ready for the weekends.

This morning I got up early and took the dialled bike back to Crucial as the new parts arrived yesterday. I am building the URP 20mm hub onto an Alien Nation deviant Matt black rim with black double butted spokes and black nipples. Once I get the old rim back I am going to put it up for sale along with some other bits that I have left over from the builds. In fact I am going to start taking photos after lunch.

Can't wait for the bike to be ready. Hopefully it should n't be too long.

I was looking online and I found a cool wearable device that you can wear on your ankle to measure leg caidence (RPMS) which I thought was cool. Also it was on sale so I thought that I could start using it in conjunction with strava to record my sprint and training sessions to measure my top leg caidence and top speeds. The device is called a moov now 2.

Training done

Got up early and tried to go to Bristol but the traffic was really heavy do I turned back when I was half way there as it would have taken too long and I wouldn't have found a parking space.

I went to bath track and did some full speed first straights and first berm and tries to jump the tabletop out of the first berm (failed miserably).

I 10 of these and out of the 10 I managed to manual the first double only once cleanly.

After this I went back to the car park and did 6 x 50m sprints using strava to record the sprints. According to strava my maximum speed was 28.2 mph which isn't too bad.

Tomorrow I am going to go to the track again and do some full laps to try and work on my leg fitness as this is one of my main weaknesses at the moment.

I made my manual stand last night but I haven't had time to use it yet. I am going to hold off until next week to use it I think as I will be workng earlies so will not be going to the track at all.

Weigh in

Just done my weighin fotmr the week and my weight is up a little bit to 103.10kgs which is not too bad as I have not trained very much at all this week due to aching legs and bad weather.

Even though my weight has not gone down I know that I have lost body fat this week as I can tie my shoe laces without crushing my diaphragm and not being able to breath. Also my Bmx trousers that were a struggle to close last weekend were loose yesterday which is another good sign.

I have also noticed that my stomach has started to flatten out which is a great sign.

Went to the track this morning to test out the dialled StayStrong and it was good except the bars and stem are too low for me. As the forks were cut down there is no option of raising the stem any higher so I will have to use the cliq forks when they come so that I can raise the stem up so that I don't feel like I am riding downhill all of the time. I have decided that I will get the URP 20mm hub that I bought last week built up on an alian nation rim so that it is strong but half the price of a box rim. As I do not want to spent much more money at the moment.

The session wasn't a total waist as my son decided he wanted to jump the small tabletop on the last straight which he managed to do after 5 tries which was impressive. He is now buzzing and wants to ride more to jump more which is cool.

I noticed that his gearing seemed a little low so I am going to mess around a bit with it a bit to see if he can get a little faster to help him improve more.

Back to it today.

Got back to training today. I went to Pilates this morning from 9-10 am then quickly back home and loaded the car and went to gates.

The track was really icy and wet to start with but thawed out nicely although it got even muddier.

Managed maybe 20-25 gates and did a few full laps as well. I was gating really well but my manuals over the first jump were terrible as per usual at the moment.

Hopefully this will change soon as I got the wood for my manual stand last night so I will make it tomorrow ready to start training Monday.
This afternoon I picked up my dialled StayStrong from Crucial Bmx in Bristol. Jamie said that the wheels were ok and that the only thing that needs changing is the cranks which I am doing next week when the cliq cranks arrive.

I have just put on my flat peddles on ready to take it to the track tomorrow to try it out.

Here is a picture of it all built up.

Apparently all that needed doing on the wheels was tightening the cones so I am going to leave them as is for now. He had to turn the spider in the crank backwards to allow for proper chain alignment but as it is temporary he said it would be fine.

I went with Shimano brakes and lever so that it is the same as my cruiser and also got the same grips for the same reason. The stem was an older S&M stem that I bought to go on my cruiser but it was too long so I have used it now and it looks the right length. I bought a new 16 tooth freewheel and a new 44 tooth sprocket so the drivetrain is pretty much new. The seat and post I went for a cheap tangent seat and post combo as it was the cheapest option available. Looking at the wheels and forks they are from a Haro bike so they should be ok spec and the rims are alien nation so should be ok. The frame is looking a bit rough with lots of old sticker residue on it. I will buy some WD40 tomorrow to get the residue off. I also want to de-sticker the forks as they have the original haro sticker with a stay strong sticker over the top. I think they will look much better with no sticker at all. We will see tomorrow if I am right or not.

Enforced rest.

Tried to get to the track yesterday but it was too icy and had snowed so I took the StayStrong into Crucial to get built up. I decided to not use the headset, cranks or brakes that cam with the bike as they were really beaten up. I had an old GT 180mm crank that I bought a while back which I am going to use and I bought all the new parts needed. This turned out to be headset, brakes, seat and post, chain tensioners, chain wheel bolts, chain wheel, freewheel and new lock on grips. I went middle of the range with the parts as I didn't want to shell out for top parts and then decide that I don't like the 20" and sell it. I also got the guys at crucial to check the wheels as they were pretty loose.

I have a few more bits are in the post for the bike. They are a URP 20mm hub, cliq 20mm forks and a cliq weoponz 180mm cranks. I am going to fit the cranks when they arrive and probably get a new bottom bracket as well but I am going to keep the forks and hub off the bike for a while as I am not sure if I will build up a wheel using the new hub and use it and the forks on my bike or sell the forks and hub and buy some new 10mm S&M forks as I bought the cliq forks really cheap I am going to make money is I sell them any way.


The idea is to ride it as it is for a while to see if I like it and then if I do get some new wheels and onyx hubs like I have on the cruiser as they are amazing even if they are really expensive.

After the way the cruiser rode at the weekend I am not touching it for a while as it seems perfect now. The next thing I am maybe going to do is swap the frame for a shorter one as it is too long for me and I tried a friend's shorter frame and it felt much better and more responsive.

I haven't decided if I will get another SpeedWagon or go for a hand built Curtis bike frame.

Here is a photo of the cruiser chilling in my lounge as I had to take it out of my car last night.

My idea with the StayStrong is to use it as my winter training bike and I want to go to more pump tracks during the week and work on my bike skills which I really need to improve. The StayStrong can also be used as my park bike so I am going to maybe put my DK up for sale as it is not getting used and is taking up space. I am also going to put all the old parts that I have lying around up for sale as I don't need them and I will invest the money I get back into the StayStrong.

Rested Up

I had to rest Monday and Tuesday this week to get over the racing on Sunday.

Tonight I did 6 x 30m sprints and I am feeling good.

Tomorrow I am going to rest again then Friday I am off so I am going to go to Bristol track and do full speed laps.

Gearing Better

Woke up and did my weakly weigh in and was surprised to see that I was down to 102.20 kgs which was really unexpected although we went pretty hard at gates on Saturday morning. The new 37x16 gearing felt really good and after a couple of bad starts I was up with or beating the guys that are usually a bit ahead of me by the first jump.  I was talking to some of the guys and they suggested that I raise my bars as they looked low and this may be why I am having so many problems manual-ing. I did this when I got home, I raise the stem 2 spacers to see how it was.

Yesterday I woke up really sore from gates but had my first race on the new gearing and it is much better. I was able to keep accelerating all the way to the first jump without spinning out and feeling like I was going backwards.

The new bar position was really good too. I wasn't concentrating on my bike at all it felt really natural.

Had a really good race today. Took 1st, 1st, 1st in my motos and 2nd in the final after taking the wrong line on turn 3 and leaving the door too far open. To be hones I was so tired by the final that I don't think that I would have had the legs to win anyway.

My sprints last week payed off as I felt really strong getting to the first jump and I was pulling away from the rest of the field in the last 3 peddles before the first jump.

I have decided that I am going to concentrate a bit more on full track sessions at gates from now on instead of just gunning the first straight and then cruising the second straight and pulling off the track. I am going to do full laps. I think this will be a good strategy as my gates are pretty good now and I need to practice racing the whole track as this is my weakness now.

I will post some of the photos from yesterday's race later today.

I have decided that I need to go back to basic's with the manual-ling and I am building a manual stand so that I can practice manual-ling without moving. I think that at the moment I am not getting far enough over the back wheel and need to practice this in a controlled situation and a manual stand seems like the logical first step as you are just practising pulling up and holding the manual and finding the balance point and keeping it. I have put the manual challenge on hold temporarily while I build this manual stand and hopefully it will be ready by the weekend.

After riding to work this morning I have decided to rest tonight as my legs are really aching and my ankle is really sore from where I twisted it a couple of times over the weekend. I will see if I fell well enough tomorrow to train instead or whether I rest tomorrow as well an wait until Wednesday to train. To be honest yesterday was harder than a sprint session so I can take it as a day training.

Here are the photos from Sunday:

Manual Challenge Day 2

Did the second day of the manual challenge today and it went worse than yesterday!!! I managed to do one good manual over the first doubles at the track where I got back and my front wheel landed on the back side of the jump but the rest were really bad. I got really frustrated and went and did some sprints instead.

My sprints went better today I I really like the new gearing although I was spinning at the end of the sprints. I managed to do 8 sprints today which is 2 more than my last session and the sprints today were also longer at around 50-60m so not all bad.

Tomorrow I am going to go to the Bristol track to get some full lap practice in before the race on Sunday and then I am going to take my bike in for a service and to get them to put my clip-less peddles back on as I couldn't get one of the peddles off!

I have Pilates on Friday so I am going to take Friday as a rest day ready to do gates on Saturday and then race on Sunday.

I have some footage from today that I will edit tomorrow if I get time and then link the video to this blog.

Rest Day

Had to take a rest day today due to aching so much from yesterday's exercise. I also had to go to Bristol and buy my new chain ring (37 Tooth) and rear Cog (16 tooth). While I was there I picked up some more muc off as my bike is filthy after riding on the track yesterday. I will take some pictures before and after I clean it tomorrow.

Once I got back I found that I also needed to buy a sprocket remover and master link plyers before I could swap out the cog. I should of got the shop to swap the cog out as it cost me more in tools that it did in parts!!! Still at least I have the tools if I need them in the future.

Reviewing the video footage from yesterday I have seen that I am not leaning back far enough over the back wheel. I am also too high up and my arms are bent. I am going to work on this tomorrow at he track and hopefully I can make some improvements in distance.

Here is the video of yesterday's practice if you missed it.

Manual Challenge Day 1

Did the first day of the manual challenge this afternoon as I had the day off yesterday as it was raining all day. This afternoon myself and Dylan my son went to the track to do a bit of training but it was too wet and icy so I decided to do the manual challenge at the track.

My son volunteered to film so it is a bit all over the place so I am editing it now and I will post the video later tonight. I used the back side of the start hill as a run up ramp and then marked a line on the floor to start manualling and my son marked how far the front wheel went. I actually went further than I thought that I would with my furthest 2 attempts being 2 bike lengths.

Once I have edited the video I will be able to analyse my technique better but I know for a fact that my arms were bent and I was not far enough back. I will update the changes that I need to do later.

I am off to Bristol track early in the morning to get some laps in ready for the race on Sunday (my birthday :-) ). Once I finish at the track I will drop my bike off at Crucial to get the gearing sorted ready for Sunday as well. I am going to go for 37x16 as I can not go any higher on the front as the 41 tooth chain ring that I have at the moment is rubbing on the chain stay when I really push hard which is not ideal. I have decided to go with a 16 on the back as I will have more room to go to a higher gearing if needed in the future once I get stronger.

After the track I did 6 x 30 m sprints in the road in front of my house to get my sprints in from yesterday. I then did my exercise circuit as detailed before except that I wasn't able to do the 20 press ups as my collar bone started to hurt and I didn't want to push it too much.

All in all I have had a good day training as I have reached all of my goals today except for eating apples and bananas as we have eaten all of the apples and I forgot that it was a bank holiday so the shops shut early!

Happy NEW YEAR!!!

Up nice and early hang over free for the first time I can remember.

Did my new years weigh in and I was surprised that I have lost about half a kg doing virtually no exercise and just drinking lime juice in the morning before breakfast and drinking 3 or more litres of water a day. Nice new years surprise.

I am off to the track after breakfast to play with my son and I will probably do the first day of my manual challenge at the track as the car park is massive an hopefully it will not be too busy so we can use the parking spaces as markers. I will video it so we can start the manual challenge series from today.