http://1.usa.gov/zOwe5E

It was great meeting up with the whole team, together for the first time, some of them I’ve known for years, others are new faces, but all are a good group of guys. Worst hat award goes to Pete Cole with some pinky, purple fleecy thing that was born in a decade that has long since past. Hero award goes to Boris (Nigel) Halpern, having flown in from Norway just for this. Pretty good effort I reckon!

Got to have a look at the Trigon bikes as well, and I have to say they are looking very nice indeed. The down tube on the mtb’s is quite frankly… enormous! I’m looking forward to getting mine and giving it a blast. In fact, it got my brain ticking over and meant I spent the evening looking through weight weenies and the Ax lightness site, figuring out ultra expensive ways to pimp the bike out.

Here’s some photos Rob Enslin took, hovering in the background while we were getting ready.

Pete Cole of Handsling Racing had just made the break in the E123′s Hillingdon Winter Series, when a crash right in front of him halted his progress. Luckily he had his Drift HD170 from www.actioncameras.co.uk rolling. Via @handsling

I have joined Handsling Racing for 2012.

Having spent last year building up my creative design business, Born75, and having a new baby (woo hoo!), I’ve been keen to get back into racing again this year to make the most of my 20 years riding experience in cross country MTB races and road races.

I was a key member of the Thames Tradesmen/Velo City team in the 90′s with Simon, Pete and Paul, and raced at every level – regional, national, world cup and world championships, so it’s going to be great being back in a team with those guys – It should be a lot of fun!

This winter I’ve been training to regain the form I had from a few years back that saw me consistently in the top 10 of every race for 4 years. Still a way to go but the intention is strongly there.

And of course, I’m also the mastermind behind the Handsling kit design…

You can follow the team here and also on www.handsling.blogspot.com
Happy 2012 everyone!

It’s helpful to check in and see exactly where your fitness is throughout the year. Testing doubles as excellent training too, so why not incorporate it regularly?

Having just wrapped up my cyclocross season I figured that it’d be a good time to test myself and see what my power profile is looking like. The screen shot above shows efforts that were done at five and 20 minute durations, (testing VO2Max and Threshold fitness accordingly). A second day of testing can be done to measure maximum one minute power and also your 10 second max effort, (which indicate Anaerobic Capacity and Neuromuscular Power respectively).

The collection of 10 second, 1 minute, 5 minute, and 20 minute data points is known as your Power Profile and can indicate where your unique strengths and weaknesses are.

Understanding what you can do for a single max effort is one thing, but how much fatigue are you able to withstand or how many repeated hard efforts can you serve out? We can also test your fatigue resistance with workouts designed specifically to do just that.

Testing on a regular basis is a great way to measure the effectiveness of your training and the results can help us determine what training might be most appropriate for the next phase. Test often and train well!

-Travis
www.momentumendurance.com
@gomomentum