Big things for Olympic Year!

Hi All,

I hope everyone is having a good start to the New Year and is slowly getting back into the swing of work, training and life in general after a good festive season. This time of year sees loads of folk donning the lycra or dusting off a severely neglected gym membership card, and committing once again to "get fit", I hope that this year as many of you as possible are successful. I always find it slightly ironic that for us brits at least, the time when we are meant to make these commitments comes during the worst weather of the year. It's not exactly conducive to getting out there and running, riding or walking off the turkey. Still, I guess if we want to change that we need to move to Sydney!

From a Pedal Precision point of view, we have some great plans for 2012. The new lab is almost ready to be opened (stand by for an opening party invite!) and along with this there are going to be some great new changes and services that we offer. As well as the better bike fit we are already famous for, there will of course be the opportunity for athletes of all sports to come and see us for injury treatment and rehabilitation, it is after all what we are qualified for so if you are suffering in any way, drop us a line and we can sort you out.

Also in the near future we are hoping to be able to offer cyclists of all abilities the chance to feel like a pro by finding out what your "numbers" are. That is, we can provide you with a barage of fitness and performance tests which can help you mark your progress over the course of a training block or season or tell you how fit you are at the moment as well as how your body responds to increased effort and what your heart rate and lactate threshold are. This type of thing is usually reserved for the Elite racers amongst us, but we know many more people would benefit from the type of knowledge it gives. For example, if you know where your lactate threshold is, and we can equate this with a certain heart rate or power output, then you will be able to guage your efforts in events more easily, so if you are planning on taking on that Sportive in July or an Ironman later in the season we can give you the ammunition you need to be able to perform to your potential without blowing up half way through.

Another big part of this year, will be our continued work with Cyclists Fighting Cancer ( www.cyclistsfc.org ). A cunning plan is being laid to create a proper race team who's sole purpose is not to win every race they enter but to increase awareness and help raise funds for such a great charity. The working title for the team is "The Cancer Fighting Cyclists" and it will include loads of riders who are passionate about bikes but also about giving something back. The first team rider to really grab the bull by the horns is our very own Thomas Wild. Tom will be taking on the first ever off-road Ironman distance triathlon in July. That's a 2.4mile swim in the channel, a 112mile bike ride and then just a marathon offroad to finish things off. It's true, he is a mentalist, but also a great athlete and friend. You can follow his progress on his blog here: questtobecomeareallifexman.tumblr.com where he'll be telling us all about his training and of course the race itself. He has already started on the long road to success by beginning his training programme provided by our friends at www.fstacademy.com where they've got him doing all sorts of training both discipline specific and more general to improve his CV system and muscular strength and endurance. If you feel you want to get more from your sports performance this year, give the guys at FSTAcademy a call.

Tom in action at one of the 2011 X-Tri Series events

At the moment we are just finalising more details of the race team and will be designing kit etc soon so keep an eye out for that. You will also be able to help support all our efforts and donate to the charity by a team wide justgiving page which will be dedicated to the team and mean that every penny gets to the right place, more on this when it's up and running!

Well, that's it for now folks, I will update you with more when the new website is up and with more fun ride reports and other good stuff soon. All the best,

Rich