What i did on my holidays.

Well i went to France to be short about it.

headed over and went to St Malo for 2 days. Nice old city, fantastic coffee, great food and the weather was cracking! Spent the first day wandering about the old town and then went off for food. On the Sunday i took the motorbike and spun out to Mont San Michele for the day. Hadnt been there since i was 8 or 9 so its was nice to get to see it as an adult!

The day after i drove down to meet all of the Irish teams for the European Canoe Polo championships in Thury-Harcourt in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near Caen. While the team did some training on the water i went out on the bike to do some training.

The area around the competition site was very hilly. I'd go out on a 2 hr ride and spend 75% of it climbing and the rest either descending, or on the flats, what of it there was! It made a great training ground with the weather staying fantastic until the day we were due to leave, which was just fine with me.

I only did 4 sessions in the week i was at the competition site. I was just using this as a way to get back into the swing of training. I didn't want to go mental. I just wanted to be able to be social and still get some rides in. Unfortunately I'm still not used to the Power-tap so managed to delete all but one of my sessions which kinda pissed me off when i found out! Note to self, read manual.

Sessions done:
Tuesday - 30km , rolling hills, easy pace, avg power 195W
Wednesday -50km, very hilly, tempo pace, avg power 223W
Thursday - 20km, hilly, very easy pace , avg power ~150W
Friday - 30km, hilly, tempo pace with some over geared sprints, avg power 200w

On the Friday with the sprints i was trying to check my max power for 5 sec during a sprint, still need to do sprint training for the track racing. Managed a 1,203w for 5 seconds, and 1,013 for 10 seconds. Happy enough with that. Give it time and it will get better!


Oh, although it was a training weekend, i was drinking, maybe a bit to much but the plan was always to stop as of the 1st of October so its not to much of an issue! On the way back to the ferry to go to the homeland i went via Omaha beach and the American cemetary. I remember going there when i was a kid and thinking it was boring. Dont think i understood it as a child. It was odd going there having understood what happend over that period . I'm not the biggest fan of America but i felt a little more appreciation for what they did then rather than now.

Ferry on the way home was the usual 17 hours of drinking and Rugby, was so tired i was in bed by 12:30. Then the spin home was more of a challenge to stay awake than anything!

Well better get back to my last day off!