James Heaton (picture courtesy of Sarah Brooke photography)

  
  

      

      

      
I returned to road riding 
      in 2005 after a 21 year break from the sport.  I had been riding a 
      mountain bike occasionally around the local country park for the previous 
      2 years and the cycling bug had bitten again.  My aim was to lose weight 
      (I weighed 15 ½ stone) and give up smoking. The following summer, I was 
      persuaded to take part in a local club time trial and join the local club, 
      Rugby RCC.  I surprised myself by enjoying it!  I hadn’t done any training 
      other than steady riding.  That summer I started to train harder and 
      watched the times tumble, breaking the hour on my second 25.  I ended the 
      year with a 10 pb of 21:46 and a 25 pb of 52:50 (this was later disallowed 
      as the course was deemed illegal under CTT regulations).  The following 
      winter I bought a book on training and wrote a training plan, training 
      hard all winter.  I had a good season in 2008, lowering my 10 time to 
      20:15 and my 25 time to 52:09. I also achieved a top 40 place in the 
      National 10, won my first open TT and won club  trophies for the overall 
      TT series, best Vet overall and the 10 and 25 mile trophies.  During 2007 
      I also started to train with power.  For 2008 I was sponsored by 
      LeisureLakesBikes.com.  It would be fair to say that I did not have the 
      best of seasons, I was laid low for a couple of months from June with what 
      at the time I thought was a virus but turned out to be a bad tooth 
      infection.  This had hampered my training and racing, though to be fair 
      there was probably an amount of overtraining playing its part.  Despite 
      less than ideal training, I managed to achieve a top 30 place in the 
      National 10.  After my enforced break, I managed a respectable ride in the 
      British TT championships, 7th in my age group, after only 2 
      weeks of training.  I then went on to lower my 10 pb to 19:49 and win the 
      LVRC National TT championships.  My training during the first part of the 
      winter of 2009/2010 went quite well, I was struck down by swine flu at the 
      beginning of the winter but recovered well.  Unfortunately, in January of 
      2010, I caught Chickenpox.  The time off the bike gave me time to reflect 
      on my training so far and realise that in order to move forward and train 
      back to full fitness after an illness like this at my age I needed a 
      guiding hand.  Left to my own devices, I had the potential to damage 
      myself and completely write off the 2010 season.  I made enquiries and 
      John came highly recommended.  After filling in a questionnaire and giving 
      John a few days to digest it (I wrote war and peace!), he rang me for a 
      chat that lasted nearly an hour.  I now know that I was over training by 
      some margin.  The challenge for this year is to get faster, I am sure that 
      with John’s help and guidance we will meet that challenge!

     
    

  

     
    
      
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