Buxton

It can be hard to motivate yourself to train five times a week through a British winter. But, the spring is the time for early season hilly time trials and these early season races are a big motivation to train hard over winter.

Before a summer diet of flat and fast dual carriageways, the early season offers the chance to do some great sporting courses. With a good winter, I thought that Buxton MTT would make an excellent early season target. If all the planets aligned, it might even be an opportunity to sneak a win in a national time trial series. But despite tapering this week, I’ve picked up a cold at the wrong time, so will miss tomorrows event. It’s a shame because it would have been good to know how I would get on. I will then be away for a couple of weeks, so the next race feels quite a long way off.

Still on the positive side:

• It’s never too early to start doing your income tax returns. There’s always something you can be doing on Good Friday.
• When I return to racing in late April, the weather will be just as windy and wet, but hopefully one or two degrees warmer.
• I’ve had a pretty good run of uninterrupted training. I can’t remember the last time I was ill.
• I have a friend who swears by tumeric. He claims it solves everything from the common cold to bad memory. So if I drink copious quantities of tumeric maybe I will be fit for tomorrow and will also be able to become a millionaire selling a cure for the common cold.
• Tomorrow there will be a strong headwind on the long climb from Longnor. I really wanted a tailwind up there.