Small changes

A good day of training today. A bit of a ride this morning and a bit of a swim this afternoon. Both sessions went well. The ride was a good solid hit. Just the sort of session you want a couple of weeks out from a race.

I have made a couple of changes on the bike recently and so far they seem to be working for me. Recently I dropped my bars by one spacer, which is a change I am very happy with, since I instantly felt more comfortable. I know, going lower should feel less comfortable, but this just felt like I was in more of the position I was supposed to be. Wow, that was vague, hard to explain I guess. All I can say is that the first time I rode the bike with the lower handlebars I thought to myself, 'yep that feels better'.

Then this week I changed over to longer 175mm cranks.

Cervelo P5s come, by default, with short cranks (170mm on most sizes). They also combine this with smaller chain rings. If you do the maths, the gearing between your pedal and the tyre is the same with a short crank and small chain ring as it is with a long crank and bigger chainring. So changing from a short crank to a long crank shouldn't make any difference. Most of the current studies show that it doesn't. The theory behind using a shorter crank is that it gives you more room between your body and your thigh, letting you feel more comfortable and theoretically run better. That is all fine and good, I am not really arguing that, the theory makes sense. However, from my personal experience I have been struggling to get the power down on my TT bike. I typically produce more power on my road bike than on my TT bike and that is something that I have been struggling with. So with the help of Churchill Cycles I decided to do a bit of experimenting. That is what today was, a bit of an experiment with a set of 175mm cranks. I liked it. Perhaps it was all psychological, I am not sure, but today the power levels I was maintaining on the TT bike were comfortably higher than I have been producing previously. Time will tell whether those differences are real, or just me being extra attentive today. But so far so good. It is a good example of one of those times, where the theory is telling you one thing, but your body is telling you something else. Sometimes you just have to listen to your body.

The swim was solid as well once I finally got myself in the river. As is usually the case, once you get going you settle into it and have a good time.

Now, to change things up a bit I am going to get a bit airy fairy. Last night we had a bit of an interesting philosophical reminder in our house. We were figuring out a puzzle in one of our daughters books. She had gone to bed, so yes it was just my wife and I figuring out a puzzle in a children's book. We can proudly say that we got it in the end. But once we had, we realised that the way we had done it was completely over complicated and there had been quite a simple way of getting to the answer (perhaps not surprising given that it is, after all, a children's book). We had missed the simple method because we were so busy looking for the hard way.

As I was riding this morning it occurred to me that our experience is a good analogy for many aspects of life, including that of training and racing. So many of us over complicate training and racing, looking for the silver bullet, looking for the 'trick' that will make us fast. Bouncing from one idea, to the next fad. When really it isn't all that complicated. A wise man has told me on several occasions (at the top of my program every week in fact), train with discipline and consistency. That's it. That is the simple way to solve the puzzle. Do that and race well. I would add to that, train honestly. By that I mean, when the program says easy, train easy, but on the flip side, when the program says hard, train hard, don't make excuses. But really it isn't trickier than that and there is no reason for us to make it so.

Anyway, enough of that, ride/run in the morning. Should be an interesting session. Another chance to try out the cranks.