Congratulations Hodgey!

Monday morning, work again (or as I call it, "recovery" :P)
Weekend saw a fish shop ride and quick run off the bike Saturday morning before work, and an easy recovery run after work (I even took Max and to my surprise he behaved quite well!).
Sunday was another early morning as I joined Nath, Rob, Lisa & Brian who are training for the Great Ocean Road Cycling Classic - a 120km time trial in Victoria next month - for a ride out to the Midlands. We went Longford via Pateena Rd and then out toward Bishopsbourne before I had to turn around and ride back to Symmons Plains; all up somewhere between 55 and 60km. Struggled in the last bit on my own against the strong headwind! I got to Symmons Plains and it was windy and freezing, though sunny.
I didn't really feel like racing in the LTC duathlon but I entered anyway and reluctantly took off on the 2.4km run/19.5km ride (8 laps)/2.4km run. My legs weren't feeling great for the run and 2.4km pace is not exactly my "race pace" (for the record I'm aiming to run 4.20min/km at the worlds) but after 2 laps I pulled ahead and was the first female onto the bike. Quickly worked out why we don't normally wear socks in triathlon - they stick to the velcro on your shoes, making them very hard to put on!! So after a couple of laps of fiddling round with that I settled into a rhythym for the next 6 laps: struggle to the top of the track barely making 15km/h into the headwind spinning my legs out of control and going nowhere; take the hairpin (fun) and click down into the lowest gear, take a drink and then get blown at up to 50km/h down the back straight; panic about getting blown over round the big sweeper; then click down to the highest gear past pit lane and start it all again.
Uber biker Mel caught up to me just by the end of the bike, and when I got off my legs were shaking (after only 20km!!!). Quick transition and I was off, running with what felt like a 10cm long stride. Into that damn headwind again and I really felt like just stopping, but with 2.4km to go I figured it would all be over in 10 minutes or so anyway. Until I had to ride home. But that was only 30km or so, and there was a good tailwind.
So I did all that and then I got home, had a shower and then ate steadily for about an hour... then cleaned the house and did the supermarket, all that fun sunday afternoon stuff... making me stress about how that's all going to get done for the next five weeks when I need to train morning and afternoon... well the answer is it won't, and the house will be disgusting, and we will be eating crap food because I haven't got time to go to the shops. Oh well, this is the life of a triathlete and I chose it so I must put up with it!
Oh then we went to Melissa and Dan's for movie night/dinner and that was a lovely relaxing end to the weekend as always. Thanks guys :)
Also over the weekend we learnt some exciting news - James Hodge won the Olympic distance age group world championships in Beijing! I belive a first world championship for an LTC athlete! He is just amazing, what an awesome effort. I am in awe. I wonder if it would be too much to ask for LTC to have two world champions in one year?
On the same day, Joe Gambles finished fifth in the World Championship 70.3 in Las Vegas - actually almost exactly the same course to what I will be doing in 2 months time. Congrats to Joe as well, I'm sure he'd be a little disappointed with that result but what fantastic time for such a tough course, and against some really really tough competition. Those pro guys are insane - some of the data they put up on Ironmanlive had them putting out average wattages comparable to Lance Armstrong's in the Tour... they're not exactly weekend hacks. And Joe has to go on and compete at the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii in just a few weeks' time, so that would have been on his mind too.
So there are two home-town heroes and speaking of Hawaii, we also have Hayden Armstrong, a former Launcestonian who now spends most of his time in Hobart, who is also going away to Hawaii for his third time. In his age group, you pretty much have to be a pro athlete to even qualify for Hawaii (he finished inside the top 10 at Ironman NZ in March).
Does anyone else think that Launceston must produce a significantly higher-than-average ratio of elite athletes? For a small town in the middle of nowhere, we seem to have a whole lot of really competitive athletes in many sports. I'm very lucky that I get to train with a bunch of experienced triathletes, many who have done Ironman or World Championships and raced at a high level. We are really spoilt for resources here in northern Tas. We have Olympic and Commonwealth games medalists, former professional triathletes, one of whom is Tri Australia's national elite development coach! Of all the places in Australia! So we should make the best of these resources, ask questions, pick their brains at every chance we get.
Speaking of questions... here are a couple (don't worry you don't need to be an elite athlete to answer). Firstly, goggles. Does anyone have any recommendations of good open water goggles? Something that stays on no matter how many times you get punched, doesn't leak or fog up, has good peripheral vision and light lenses? Even if you have an old pair I could try.. still no idea what I'm going to wear in Lake Las Vegas.
Similarly, bike saddles. Suze Dowling lent me her ISM Adamo TT seat and that was OK after a while, but I'm thinking of getting the new Selle Italia Tri Gel. Anyone had any experience with this?
Lastly, and this is not even a sport related one, but my iPod died and I'm not facing two days on a plane without an MP3 player. Recommendations? No I won't pay extra for a picture of a half-eaten apple on it, and I want something that works with all computers with no extra software. Is there such a thing that combines an MP3 player and e-book reader? That would be awesome. Got any good motivational or relaxing song recommendations?
Well enough questions for now, better get back to work.
Today is the first day of my last training block -about another five weeks hard then a rest and then start to taper for the race. Scary!
Did I mention my "Big Day" before? Well Johnno has come up with a potentially better idea - finish the ride and run at his family's shack at Bridport instead of Scottsdale so we can all have showers and relax at the shack. Of course this would be better if we did the Big Day on a Saturday so we could stay the night and chill on Sunday. So I'm thinking I will see if I can swap my work Saturday to the following weekend so we can do it Saturday. If not, we may swap Big Day to the following weekend, the 1st October. Will keep you updated... please think about coming and doing one or more of the legs with me :)
Til next time,
Holz