Kentish Killer 2016 - Finding my own rhythm again

You may remember that I finished the Kentish Killer with the fastest time and set a new course record, in 2015. The ride is 112km through the Kentish hills and accumulating 2,300m of vertical elevation. In terms of vertical meters per distance of the ride it is quite an extreme ride, indeed.
So this year initially I just wanted to finish it, as my form really hadn't been materialized whatsoever.
To my surprise I found myself amongst the front 6 riders on the penultimate climb and finished the day with the 3rd best time, some 20sec slower than the young and gifted from my club.
You can visit the ride on my strava page:

KentishKiller2016-strava

So where was the winter? I was waiting with my winter training for the winter to come, but it never arrived...

For the ones of you who might have started to believe that I have passed away, I haven't. Just become a bit older, more lethargic and been confronted with a number of health issues over the winter, which, yes you guessed right, prevented me from any structured training.

Heart issues, respiratory issues and finally being hit by Rheumatism basically made even the Sunday teamride kind of hopeless for me. It was a time of concessions, when increasingly I got dropped not just on the climbs but also on the flat. The message was pretty clear, pulpitations, high heartrate, super high TSS for each of those rides basically meant I was spending it all.
I still enjoyed the sunday rides with the fragments of the team that could be bothered to turn up, but at the end I increasingly felt like an obstacle and didnt want anyone to wait for me.

coffee after the penultimate winterride, Kent