Rebecca gives her final thoughts before her record attempt, where you can follow her progress live!
This Sunday 18th April at 8am start time, I will attempt to set a Roads Record Association Circuit Record. This is an officiated solo event. I will need to bike in the Brecon Beacons National Park 104.5miles and climb 6600ft in order to pass three checkpoints. The time I need to beat is 6 hours. I am really excited to get on the bike and set off now as I have been specifically training for three months towards the challenge.
Liam, my coach of four years, set out a training schedule and plan that would aim to improve my fatigue resistance, which included some low carb rides, and plenty of turbo in the cold weather. Since January I have found myself doing lots of hours on the bike and then adding in tempo and sweet spot intervals as well as some threshold work. Most notable has been a 5 hour ride that I have completed every 7 days and Liam has monitored how much power I can output at the end of that ride for 20minutes. When I first tried to achieve a ramped 20minute power after expending 2000KJ of work (80mile ride), my legs just gave up! Within 6 weeks my 20 minute power at the end of these rides was right up in the threshold zone and a 20 minute power that I would be satisfied with on fresh legs, let alone 4.5 hours of riding in the bank.
I am super happy with my training and it always amazes me how Liam gets me to my goal event with new pbs and fresh and ready. I can only imagine that is a sign of a good coach, in that he sets the training with a confidence that makes my side of it (the riding) stress-free!
On Sunday my ride will be live tracked using a GPS tracker. Dot watching is kind of fun and addictive. You can watch my progress on the map by following this link, it will be activated at 8am on Sunday 18th April, when I cross the control point which is just after the start of the ride.
Ok, so wish me luck and let's see how this goes!