Preparing for the 2017 season

The last few race-free days...

I'm writing this post during the last race-free days this Spring. It's Thursday today and on Sunday the 2017 race season starts off with a race in the Danish cup called Hotcup. From now on I will compete every weekend until the end of October.

My Strava Fitness curve is looking good

Three hard weeks of training

The last three weekends have been race free and I've spent them doing a lot big volume long distance training

Easter weekend "mini training camp"

I had decided to have my own mini training camp during Easter weekend. Many of my friends were abroad biking in the Mallorca hills and I was a bit envious of them. I had four days off and got a lot of biking done: 5+ hours of rolling time each day. Most of it on technical single track. It's an interesting thing when you spend that many days in a row on the (mtb) saddle as you become one with the bike. It's a nice and very relaxing feeling.

Some photos from my Easter biking (yeah, we had snowfall!):

Weight

After Andalucia Bike Race my weight went up to about 78kg. Partly because of my disappointment with having to abort the race, but also due to the issues with my issues with the Achilles tendon. It's down below 75kg now again. I'm obviously not satisfied with this so it's going to continue to drop during the next few weeks. I was at below 73kg before Andalucia and that's the first goal. Last year, before Beskidy Trophy, I was at 70kg, and my goal is to reach that weight again before this year's Beskidy Trophy.

The Achilles tendon

About a week after Andalucia I got four shots of what is essentially blood-thinning medication as I had the diagnoses "tendon creak". This was about 4 weeks back. The shots helped a lot and the pain disappeared almost entirely. However it would return at regular intervals when I pushed hard. But it is clearly better and even during this last Easter weekend when I really did a lot of training the pain was only moderate. Today, after having done an interval session on the training bike and then bike commuting to work I feel no pain what so ever. Previously hard sessions on the stationary bike would typically trigger the pain.

What's coming up?

This week: Hotcup
Next week: XCup
W18: H12 - This is a fun 12-hour team event in Denmark.
W19: Billingeracet - Race #1 in the Swedish Marathon cup and the first important race of the season. I will be trying to maximize my form for this race
...
W24: Beskidy Trophy - The big one!