Roadiechick.

Thanks for the compliment, but my coach organised it for me - he's also one of my best mates too so that's good.

It sounds like you're doing well with your training - being able to do 100km rides is really good. As for fitting in the rides, well I'm a uni student so my hours are more flexible than other people - but I'm doing my PhD so its like a full-time job in terms of hours. The short answer is I make time. I ride in the mornings - this morning I did a 60km ride with the bunch and that only took 2 hours 4:45 -6:45am. My Tuesday ride is about 1hr15min - 1hr30min. One advantage we have here is that from about September until early April the sun rises before or around 5am making it easier to train in the mornings. Today though, dawn didn't start until about 5:50am which is annoying, but even in the middle of winter the sun will always be up by around 6:30am. Another thing with time is it depends on what time you start work and how long it takes you to get there. I don't know what you have to do in the morning but say if you have to be at work at 8:30 and it only takes 20 min or less to drive there, then you should be fine if you're home by 7:30am. Stuff like ironing clothes and getting lunches ready the night before could give you an extra 15min or more in the morning.

My old training schedule was a 70km ride on Sunday, 30km or so each on Wednesday and Friday, 50km rides on Tuesday and Thursday, and racing on Saturday. Racing was shorter then because i was in a lower grade. In my first year I found it hard to keep up even on the 70km ride and might only be able to do one short turn - say 4 or 5km compared with the 8-10km turns that a lot of other riders do. Just stick with it on your longer rides, in a month or so you will feel a lot better on those rides than you do now and it will gradually improve.

Ausgirl