He said yes.

My post frequency is down to one per week.

My training volume is only between six and seven hours per week.

I'm struggling to get more writing and saddle time, mainly because I'm either too busy or too tired.

Tuesday nights I have been doing power threshold session on the windtrainer. I initially started the evening sessions because I didn't manage to get up early. Then I noticed that the windtrainer sessions are actually more beneficial, especially the threshold power sessions that I took from Coggan's and Allen's book (page 84).

The windtrainer allows for targetted work at threshold power. They are tough sessions of about 60 to 80 minutes. On the road I'm never able to work exactly in one narrow zone. My power is always all over the place.

3 x 5 min threshold intervals with 5 min recovery



1 x 5 min blow out session followed by 10 min in E2
Intervals 2 x 15 minutes as follows:
2 min at 110% of threshold power,
-10 Watts every minute for next 4 minutes,
+10 Watts every minute for next 2 min
7 min at TH 95-106%



5 min blow out and 20 min at 95-106% of threshold power

Wednesdays I do Tempo sessions on the rollers. The tempo sessions are not as tough and I usually turn them into cadence work. I especially like the one where you work in your tempo zone at your natural cadence and then you work at plus 20 rpm for a prescribed time and then at minus 20 rpm while maintaining the tempo power, except that I can't do the minus 20 rpm because even the 53/12 doesn't give me enough resistence to stay in the correct power zone.

Tempo session

Friday I did a Riverloop with friends and after the coffee stop I was heading for Mt Coot-tha to add three more hill repeats to an otherwise easy ride but it started pouring down rain as soon as I left the coffee shop so I decided to ride home and get out for hill repeats later in the day. That later in the day never happened because friends from Cairns visited and a lunch turned into an afternoon tea turned into dinner at the local Thai place turned into an overnight stay and breakfast and another lunch and some bike shop visits ... We hadn't seen each other for over a year.

Saturday morning when everybody was still asleep I raced the local club criterium just for training and Alberto had said to add at least 25 km afterwards but everytime I was about to leave I bumped into someone else and chatted for a bit and so the 25 extra kilometers never happened.

Today I managed a two hour ride to McAfees lookout when I had planned a four hour ride to Mt Mee. I had slept in and then the morning was taken up by picking up the new bed for the spare bedroom for when my parents come over to stay with us in December/January and then shopping and lunch.

I came to the conclusion that if I want to race the Tour of Bright I need help. With all that has happened this year I can't do it by myself. So I asked Alberto to help me with a training program and encouragement. He didn't say yes straight away. I understand that commitment has to come from within. I'm glad he agreed to help me. It's only five weeks.

Winning is not the aim but if I can go into the tour as best prepared as I can with the little time that is left then I will have a better time and more fun. That's all.