It is the off season for us old retro BMX racers, a time where we can sit back, relax in front of the heater on a cold winters day, drink beer, eat pizza and not have to worry about when the next race is. That lifestyle of luxury is fast drawing to a close with the first open meet only a few weeks away and whilst my fellow retro racers have been hibernating and hopefully getting fat and lazy, I have been out there continuing training if for nothing else but to keep my fitness base in tact.

Todays torture test saw me back at Edithvale velodrome for some sprint training on the bike with some laps of the running track in between. Everything started off easy, a couple of laps of the velodrome, followed by a lap of walking the running track, in total a 1400 meter warmup.

It is now that the fun starts, back on the bike of 2 laps of the velodrome, with two 50 meter sprints thrown in per lap, coming to almost a complete stop and then building the speed in a 50 meter sprint, these were short and sharp and really tested out the leg strength to get the power down through the hips and into the pedals to get the wheels turning, 2 laps and 4 sprints later, it was time for a lap of the running track to recover and get ready for the next phase of the sprint session.

From there, the sprints started building in length from 70 meters, then 80 meters, up to 90 meters and finally two laps of the velodrome with 100 meter sprints, against the wind, these hurt particularly the last one, legs were caning and the grunts coming from me were louder than a tennis player on serve. A lap of the running track to wind things down brought our training session to an end.

That was until I came up with the bright idea of filming one of the sprints, so thanks to Lydia my training partner, she was on filming duties for one last sprint, where I gave it everything for one last 100 meter effort and came away with my maximum speed of 37.1 km/h. Something to work on, my aim is to hit that 40 km/h mark within 100 meters, something I am pretty sure I can do with a bit more sprint training under my belt. Out of interest as always, I ran my Garmin Edge 500 during the training session, I forgot my heart rate monitor so unfortunately do not have heart rate stats, but I do have estimated power output and with a peak of 1280 watts I can see that the training that I have been doing over the course of the year with the secret trainer is really paying off, my leg strength has increased and I can now get the power down through my hips more effectively to get the speed up and going a lot quicker then I had been able to 12 months ago.

Finally, how do I recover, from this herculean effort, a shot of Paramount Nutritions BCAA+ supplement I find helps rehydrate me quickly and importantly replaces the lost electrolytes you lose whilst sweating. Retroracer31 has partnered with Paramount Nutrition and when purchasing any of their range of supplements from their site, use the coupon code ADAMMPC to get yourself a discount from your purchase.