Jody Cundy blogs on the his modeling day at the Tower of London and how new software is helping his training.
Catwalk jitters for Jody Cundy!
I have just got back from a nice sunny camp in Majorca - well apart from two days when we had typical Manchester weather.
I had to come back to London for the Team GB kit launch and thought that would be the end of the nice weather but it has been fantastic.
The Adidas kit launch day was amazing - we had a rehearsal in the morning and it all went to plan. It was pretty nerve wracking waiting for your cue to stride out into position. Florence and the Machine was blasting out of the stereos system and there was an elaborate stage set up at the Tower of London. I walked out and was trying to get my pose right and I could feel my left starting to twitch and bounce - I thought why on earth are you shaking!
I was standing on the stage and all you could see was as sea of camera lenses and flashes going off and people tweeting and recording it - it was pretty nerve wracking but it was an amazing experience to be part of. It was an honour to be one of the first people to pull on that tracksuit and skin suit. I think you got a real sense of how the kit works across Team GB - it really brought together a brand identity.
On the label it says "Only The Best For The Athlete" which I thought was a lovely touch and tweeted a picture on Twitter. However a newspaper decided that I was commentating on where the garment was made - thankfully they saw the error of their ways and gave me a full apology.
Away from the glitz and the glamour of the kit launch I am back in the gym training hard. I am working on speed and power to get me up to the race speeds I am looking for. I am back on the track next week and am doing my only race ahead of the Paralympics.
Next Friday is the Good Friday Race in Herne Hill and I am really looking forward to racing there. Last year it was in Manchester as they had had a few years of terrible weather at Herne Hill, of course on the day there was full sunshine in Herne Hill!
There was talk that they were going to pull down The Herne Hill Cycling Track but it was one of the 1948 Olympic venues and it has so much history and part of the whole British cycling development program. They have invested a bit of money into it and sorted out a few of the problems they had there. It looks great from the pictures I have seen and I hope it rides as well as it looks.
I have just fitted a new power meter on my bike and it is an essential peace of kit that we use on the track. It measures your peak power, your speed, your cadence and you can see what you need to do off those numbers. You can see where you are in your training and whether what you are doing in increasing your speed and your power. It also shows where you are wasting your energy. They are really key tools and I have just had one fitted to my road bike too.
British Cycling have also got a new training software package from Training Peaks. All the coaches have access to it and you plug in your numbers online. That means that every part of our training is analysed now, and not just specific sessions. They can keep a close eye on us, monitor the numbers and make sure we are getting the most out of everything we do on the road and on the track.
That is about it - what with training camps and a bit of modeling I have not had much time for anything else, but at this stage I would not have it any other way.
