I'm back and at it again....

Typical traffic through Corfe..

Yes, following my recent spell of illness and my decision to take some time out down in Devon and have a total and complete break from the bike I am now back and at it.....Cycling that is..!

With less than eight weeks to go before I head off with the rest of the lads from the 10in10 team on our Ten Countries in Ten Days ride I am now having to put some serious work in to ensure that I am up to the mammoth task that we have set ourselves....

Checkout the Dorset Flag.....Always nice to see

It would be a major challenge to take on if I was in my mid twenties....at my age and with my health issues it put's the whole thing into a totally different league.... 

Trying to put some proper training in this year has been problematic to say the least....
In actual fact I've only been out on about four separate training rides this year...everything else has been done indoors on my static bike with very targeted training concentrating on both power and speed. 

The prolonged bad weather did not help nor did the health problems...in the end I felt that not being able to get out on the roads was dragging me down and it was starting to affect my focus......so I thought if I were to have time away from everything I could reboot both my body and my mind and come back with renewed vigour....

 It seems to have worked..... 
I have been out on a couple of short rides of about 30miles and it seems that I have not fallen any further behind with my form....Indeed on a ride I did with JD yesterday we experienced some brutal winds with gusts along the open coastal road of up to 39mph and I still managed to complete the ride at an average speed in excess of 15+mph.
 I felt pretty good after the ride too and that is probably more important than the ride itself....

JD on the other hand did struggle badly against the winds, so I felt that I had put in an acceptable performance..... What I need to be concentrating on now is slowly building up my ride distances again....
Having said that I don't see it as a problem as I have a huge base mileage of 11,000+ from last year which must put me in a strong position......

So there you have it...that's where I am right now....
You will start to see more regular blog posts here at purpletraveller from now on as we get closer to the big ride....
Before that of course we have a weeks training camp for the team and I plan on blogging each day from the camp with a blow by blow account of how we are doing. 
Then a week after that we will all be riding in the Jurassic Beast Sportive and I will obviously be giving you a full report on that as well......

Sorry that I have not been posting over the past couple of weeks but I really did need to get away from everything in order to realign myself....all done now so it's head down....focus...and go for it!!