VeloUK: Have you started your winter training and if so, how long did you spend off of the bike post season and how many hours a week would you spend now training?
Rob: I've been back riding again for quite some time now really. May last race of the season was the Tour of Bulgaria that was on at the same time as the Tour of Britain (11-18 Sept.) - it was an eight day / nine stage race which was a good race to do at the end of the season. After Bulgaria I carried on riding a bit as for a while it looked like I may do another UCI stage race in October but it fell through which was a shame as after Bulgaria I had good legs. I therefore took about the last three weeks of October off of 'training' though I still did a couple of cafe rides each week and met Dave Clarke for the odd easy ride. At the moment I'm riding about 20 hours a week - I'm quite lucky that I have plenty of people to train with and that makes life easier!
VeloUK: What is a typical weekday ride for you (how long and what intensity) and what sort of rides do you do on a weekend (how long and what intensity)?
Rob: At the moment I'm doing fairly short blocks of training and so one week I may barely ride at a weekend and the the next weekend I may be doing eight or nine hours. In the past I've probably done too much steady riding and so at present I've got more specifics within my schedule. A standard training day at present is about 4 hours with some structure within it such as some over-geared work, time riding tempo or seated climbing on laps of a hilly 40 minute loop that I do near Bradgate Park (Leicestershire).
VeloUK: Do you ride Xmas day or New Years Day?
Rob: Most years in the past I've generally ridden on both of them and I expect to do the same this year. Christmas Day I normally try to get out for a few hours or so with a few of my mates. New Years Day this year I'll be doing about 3-4 hours as I don't have anything big planned for NYE - a day on which I normally try to do a long ride.
VeloUK: Do you intend to go on a training camp abroad and if so, what would be a typical training camp there in terms of time spent training and the type of training rides they would be?
Rob: All being well I'll be going away for a while in both January and February although I don't have anything arranged yet. This year I spent all of January and February based in Calpe in Spain and I did plan to go back there for this winter but that's not happening now. If I go away for only about a week I'll do in the region of 30 hours a week whilst using the terrain to put in some longer efforts within rides of about 5 hours, whereas in the past when I've spent most of the winter abroad I've just trained a similar amount to what I would at home, the main difference being the temperature!
VeloUK: Finally, what will be your first races for 2012?
Rob: At present I'm not sure where I'll be starting the 2012 season as the team I was going to be racing for in 2012 isn't going ahead now and so a lot has changed in the last week or so, therefore at the moment I don't yet know who I'll even be racing for! Hopefully soon I'll know more though if I'm going to be in the UK at the time I'll probably start at the Perfs Pedal Race in February as I'd like to do a similar race program to last year and so do a UCI stage race in March.
