Ah, Wednesday. Nothing quite like a Wednesday. The middle of the work week. The day before Thursday which is the day before Friday. Now throw in the start of a new training block and this Wednesday takes on even greater meaning. It is the infamous double day. A road ride in the morning. A cyclo-cross ride in the afternoon.

Thanks to the frosty weather and icy roads, I ended up doing my morning ride on the trainer. Probably for the best anyway since I had to do some specific microburst intervals. As much as I loath the trainer, it is a useful tool when specific work-outs are required. It allows you to remove variables such as stop signs/lights, dogs, tail/head winds, etc. – making it pretty simple to focus totally on the required efforts. A solid two hours was put in this morning. During the recovery block at the end, Marc decided to raise my saddle – he raised it a full centimeter! Guess it was a bit low. Marc realized that I wasn’t getting full leg extension. Then when Tim and Jos came by, Tim decided to push my saddle forward… It was pushed all the way back so we moved it forward about a centimeter. Time will tell what these changes do to my riding position. But admittedly, my riding position does need some adjustment.

After a bit of a break and a refuel, I was out again for the second ride of the day. I took the bike with the adjusted saddle height and position. And? Well, I didn’t notice any negative affects from these changes. Felt quite natural really. Marc came out with me on this ride and was a massive help. He essentially rode behind me and shouted things like “pedal”, “look up”, “look ahead”, “pedal – why aren’t you pedaling”, “good job”, “better”. I started the ride a bit tense and rather spectacular crash in the first ten minutes didn’t help matters. It has been a long time since I’ve endoed and had the sensation of “flying through the air”. Not sure what happened but now I’m a bit stiff and sore – the front of my helmet made a very nice and deep imprint in the snow. Thank-you Giro for making such reliable helmets!

We zoomed around the ‘cross course at Averbode for a good couple of hours – working on getting faster, smoother, more confident and trying to do the “little” things right. At times frustrating, but with patience, I was able to see small improvements. It is fascinating what the layer of snow does to a course. All in all, a great ride.

In fact, a great day of training. I’d been craving a hard interval work-out to get that ache in my legs and a bit of panting in my lungs. Then to follow this up with a ride where I saw some progress, well the training day is pretty much complete.

Tomorrow is looking like another good day of training. A little 2.5 hours with tempo intervals. Another date with the trainer. But at least Marc has got lots of good movies for me to watch!

Well, I’m done for the night. Time to chillax with the remote control and the television. Last night we stumbled upon the track World Cup from Cali. Watched the Canadians rip it up pretty fierce. Nice to see.

Over the last few days I’ve received some pretty amazing emails and comments. Really these mean so much to me. I love reading them. I read them out loud to Marc. I keep them open so I can refer back to them and capture the positive vibes you’re sending me. All I can hope is that one day I can do the same for you.