George Fox. Passion for Performance.

My journey with MBPC, so far...

In November 2015 I sat down at work with a couple of mates and chatted about my strengths and weaknesses as a rider. We concluded that I was brilliant at riding my bike for 5 hours, but in reality I wasn’t that quick.

I’d had no tuition on, or access to, Training Peaks where my training was being uploaded for me. After making a list of possible coaches I chose to get in touch with Matt and have a consultation about my training and what I wanted to achieve.

The first thing that hit me was Matt's passion, frustration, even anger almost at the quality, or lack of quality, that I had been doing for the year. I didn’t know how to feel initially, when somebody sits in front of you and tells you that the training you have been doing is very average (putting it politely) and then lists 5 or 6 reasons why I wasn’t going as quick as I’d wanted to be going it shocks you a bit! This passion for speed is what had me sold straight away, there was a coach in front of me that clearly cared about what I was doing and how I was doing it.

So what happened next?

Well I started the training instantly, and it was brutal. I was doing half the number of hours that I’d been doing previously, double the rest days, but getting stronger every single week. I hit the beginning of 2016 the best I had ever gone wondering how it had all happened.

The best thing about that winter...I was motivated!

After a year of racing for the team I helped to set up at Wellingborough Cycles I chose to move over to Team Bottrill, where it was clear that every element of your performance as an athlete was catered for one way or another. 2017 started equally as well, better in fact, I hit April with the best form I’d ever had after a winter of carefully working on weaknesses and strengths to make me a much stronger rider all round.

Good Friday 10 on the V718 - 1st 18.12

What followed this was a pretty major dip in form and the reason is pretty simple, I couldn’t handle the training load any more. So why did I persevere with it? At 23 I needed to know my breaking point, that level of CTL, training load, overall Fitness Vs Fatigue that my body could handle. As a young rider I knew I wasn’t at my best still, so finding my ceiling level in a year where I was still developing in hindsight was the most effective way to move forwards.

Mentally I learned a lot about myself, I