After a covid-shortened but quite successful 2020 race season (doing timetrials and hill climbs), I looked forward to another good season in 2021 with a solid winter of training behind me. One of my big bucket list items that I still hadn’t managed to tick off (in 2019 due to mechanical issues, and 2020 due to covid) was to enter some of the CTT Classic Series events (hilly ‘sporting’ time trials) and two of these were the first events I targeted. Unfortunately, around this time, and for reasons that have never been explained, I started to suffer with what I can only describe as chronic fatigue. I found myself unable to train consistently and watched my fitness starting to leak away. I also found I wasn’t able to sustain threshold efforts for anything like long enough to do time trials properly. The first Classic Series event went reasonably well – a much longer effort than normal with a 42 mile hilly time trial in Worcestershire. The second event, which was three laps of a lumpy 10.4 mile circuit in Northants, was an absolute disaster and I almost gave up after the first lap! After that I did a few of the club TTs once they started, the first few of which were disappointing and the last one I did just awful. At this point I realised that I wasn’t enjoying it at all and it was pointless to continue, so that was my race season over before it had really started.

For the rest of the summer I didn’t do much training at all, just some club and Catenary group rides, the Saturday morning club chaingang and some group coaching sessions, all of which I enjoyed. I couldn’t help feeling guilty though when the Catenary team athletes were all working so hard and doing so well in their races and other challenges. I found that I could do a steady ride ok, but if I tried to go hard it either didn’t work at all, or meant I was wiped out for days and couldn’t do much. It was really impacting my mental health as well and a fair bit of comfort eating meant I was putting on weight as well. I had some blood tests (and covid tests) but nothing significant was found.

Eventually by September I started to feel a bit more human and had the bright idea of entering some CX races (there was no way hill climbs were going to be an option), many years after my last CX season in 2017. I found myself enjoying the CX races more than I remember previously, and this also coincided with starting to be able to put in reasonably consistent training weeks and feel the ‘old me’ coming back. Fast forward to mid-Dec and with the Central region CX season completed (including my best ever results!), my fitness back up to decent levels, and my weight back down to my race weight, I feel 1000x times better than I did six months ago. I’m now hoping to put in a consistent winter of training and see what 2022 brings.

Tim Phillips

Well that didn't turn out as planned! 2021 training and race review

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