23/08/2025
He won't think it anything special as he has his sights set higher, but we have a new North West Crit champion..... John Bardsley
This season has been very very hard for John, a solid winters work should have left him 100% race ready, but from late February and into early March he started to suffer from chronic fatigue.
All cyclists suffer from levels of fatigue, it kind of goes with the territory in many ways. But it is something we should look for and avoid.
When it becomes Chronic.....the body does not want to come out of the fatigued state. Often sparked by underlying infections it has a negative effect on many things, but lower red blood cell levels and the ability to absorb nutrients can be affected.
It was a really hard call back in April to make. JB would need to take some set time away from exercise. The normal prescription would be 3-6 months, but between us we felt we had acted early and decided 3-4 weeks ...then start back slow and track his key metrics.
Joe (head coach) gave him some work (working for him), with the key aim being to help JB gain some other experience, pocket some money and not be sat around thinking about the training he was missing.
It also gave Joe the chance to communicate with JB on a regular basis.
After 3 weeks we started back, firstly riding to and from work easy, so we could keep the regular contact. Slowly increasing the workload each week. It's also fair to say the first few weeks were slow going.
After 5 weeks we sent him racing in France (well undercooked) but he understood it was a key part of recovery.
It also proved as a bit of a test to see if he could avoid taking a backward step. Race one he was ok for 60min but then felt the pace and backed off, got round and started the next day.
Day 2 he got to around halfway, but looking at his metrics we could tell it was a lack of race fitness and not fatigue.
A week of specific training, another 3 day race (he got to day 2) and then a town GP on the last day....he gets round and we know the trip for him has been progressive.
He comes home and we review things a little more, he has improved but things are once again starting to stall so we really look into the potential issues and why things are slowing down.
Now some of this stuff is way too critical to give away on here for free, but together we looked to educate and talk through the next part of the process and how to react.
Roll on 4 more weeks and JB has taken 2nd on GC at a NAT B stage race, completed another 3 day race. Done a sub 20min 10tt on a road bike. Got round a 113 mile NAT A and continued to progress.
He has started once again to dominate crit races and today he beats a pretty good field to become North West champ 🏆
A fair bit of racing still to come for JB and we can see a really big result in the legs now.
The main thing we should all take from John's season is, work and talk with your coach, look to really make the hard calls and never let the head go. Simply plan and reset things then go again with a plan that makes sense.
Top work big fella!
