I have spent today, Saturday, practicing at my track and have had a great time. The track had been prepared well, as usual and watered really well making great berms. The weather has been awesome, really hot.

I love riding when it is hot because I get to feel a cool breeze blowing through my Thor jersey. Fantastic.

Plenty of riders turned out to practice and I had a lot of fun in each of my three motos. The first ride was supposed to be a warm up and after a handful of laps I was beginning to push my speed a little and felt good. The second moto I had fun chasing down some of the faster riders in our group, however, I had the most fun in the last moto. Whilst I started off wanting to keep my heart rate around 165/168, I noticed a rider close behind me. I upped my pace and was still being closely followed and this lasted for the full 20 minutes, it was great having someone on my back wheel for the whole moto.

Looking at the information on my heart rate (HR) monitor, I can see that for the last couple of laps when I made an extra effort, my HR went up to 188 and stayed there, for roughly five minutes. This is two beats higher than my maximum HR.

I am pleased with this because in the last ten weeks I have only ridden 5 times and shows that my training in the swimming pool has been working well.

When I got home from riding the weather was still really good so I went out for a cycle ride for an hour and ten minutes with an average HR of 128. This will act as a good recovery ride and remove any lactic acid which might have made me feel stiff and achy tomorrow morning.