Leigh: The time trial season begins!

The calm before the storm!

A training plan is important and meeting your daily and weekly and monthly training goals is just as important.

When the weather seems to disagree with your plan this often causes a dilemma. Do I train or not train? Do I go or just stay home and do my workout indoors? Do I skip my workout? Do I risk the weather?

Wednesday night's training called for the Oakville Cycling Club's first time trial event of the 2010 season. A time to go out and do a long, hard effort.

I looked out the window last night and the sky did not look promising. The forecast called for thunder storms and the wind was definitely a blowing.

I emailed the club organizers and they said they were going for it. I decided that perhaps the weather 50km away would be better than the weather in my neighbourhood. It turned out I was right - somewhat - and I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived in Moffat, Ontario to a non-raining environment.

I arrived early enough to chat with club president Robert Narejko and actually sign up for my new club membership with the Oakville Cycling Club. I then had time to realize that my old-school time trials bars no longer work with my new bike set-up so I just got ready to do a "sans aero" time trial! Preparation is everything - it pays to come prepared - in every way. I admit, I wasn't as prepared as I could have been...

I got in a good warm up and headed over to the start line where I took this picture above! The steam was coming of the ground and the sky was turning an odd colour - the calm before the storm! Just as we lined up for the start it started to pour and the first 5 minutes of the race was done in an all-out downpour followed by a pretty wet experience of rain, rain and more rain!

Still - you must focus in a time trial and just do your thing and ignore everything else - focus on the effort. The Oakville CC's course is pretty nice - only four corners (all right-hand turns) and fairly flat with a few rollers on each stretch that mix things up pretty nicely.

Being the first time trial of the season I just wanted to go out and go hard! I kept my heart rate between 180-182 for 32 minutes and I was pretty happy to get my muscles warmed up to a hard continuous effort.

Pretty soon the pain was over and the deed was done - training goal met for the day!

I love the social part of club time trials - after a hard effort you get to chit chat with fellow cyclists and relish in your effort. After tonite's effort we hung out (soaked and somewhat chilled), read over the results, prizes were handed out and the night was over!

It was a good time. Oakville CC will be hosting them twice a month on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Their schedule can be found here and I believe the event is open to members and non-members!

I'm really looking forward to this summer and doing club events and rides with the Gears Girls as well as the Oakville Cycling Club time trials and doing some crits with the Midweek Cycling Club.

The Eat-Clean Diet Women's Cycling Team will be posting stories and blogs all season...stay tuned for more tales from the big ring...