Time to Rethink

Hey everyone and welcome back, as you may have read in my previous entry I had and continue still to have some sleep problems that are affecting my performance and to a lesser extent emotionally too, I have spent a few days mulling over what could have possibly brought this on, I have in the past had odd weeks of poor sleep but nothing this severe, so thanks to a quiet afternoon in work i tried to work a solution.

The biggest problem I could see was the increase in my workouts, I had a 50% increase in miles last month that may well have been too great an increase for my body to cope with, I am aiming for the same again this month so I will see.
Secondly there is my sleep hygiene, no I don't mean I go to bed smelly, let me explain. Most of my workouts are done in the evening between 18:30 and 20:30 so with a bed time of 21:30 I am not really going to bed in a state that encourages quality sleep patterns, I am still pumped from my workout and then then I rush around getting my stuff sorted and the last of my chores that I simply cannot do earlier, or to put it simply I am trying to sleep with my engine running.

What I am going to try and do is when possible fit my training sessions into my afternoons after work, should not be a pain although I am not a fan of the heat or riding in day time traffic for that matter, this change will also allow me more time to perform body maintenance and maybe a strength workout too, but of most importance it will allow me to wind down and relax before bed, will try it for a month and see.

As my day ride in Wales is not too far away now and with the approaching race in August I have decided to start adding in regular trail miles, today's was awesome, I hooked up into Cann woods again for some nice dusty trails.
It was pretty much the same loop as last time but I added one large element.......the fire road climb "insert fireworks and fanfare here" this is a path that keeps going up, and is all gravel fire road, I am a sucker I love riding up hill and this is one of my favorites so i added a little footage from the climb in there, the view from the top is awesome but sadly mostly masked by new tree's but I love it.
Oh and for the record the Pineapple and Ginger Torq energy bars are the mutts nutts, I am off to buy a box tomorrow.

Well that's all from me for today, more to follow soon with this weeks rides with lots of helmet cam goodness from wales in the blog after.