More training, more racing, more learning

Just three weeks to go until the big one - Coles Bay 100 - as I reflect on the last fortnight of training and racing.

The week after the Seven Mile Beach tri was a fantastic week of training. I managed to clock up 26.5 hours and although I did feel like I was walking around half asleep by the end of it, I was very happy to look back on such a solid week.

This past week has been pretty slack in comparison which, with the time left until Coles Bay, is a little disappointing. But as they say you learn more from your failures than your successes, and while physically I may not have gained a lot from the week, mentally I have taken on board a lot of lessons. It's been a good reminder of how important it is to keep an open mind and keep learning from everything you do and, importantly, everyone you meet (a point that I will come back to later).

One of the biggest lessons I've really had drummed into me this week (and you know, I can be told something 1000 times but it won't be til I've actually done it that I'll understand) is not to let the little things get in the way of the big overall goal.

Case in point: I'm training for the Coles Bay 100, which is a long course triathlon, and this of course forming part of my base for hopefully another crack at the World Long Distance Championship (finance depending!). Therefore volume of endurance training should be my focus. And as we all know the ability to do this depends on making the most of the time we are not at work (unless you're a pro of course, or a teacher, or a student....)

I had an entire day off on Thursday which the previous week equated to about 6 hours' training - and how many this week? 50 minutes! Why? Because I let my ego talk me into going to a, excuse my french, $#!**y little triathlon race for State series points, which ultimately adds up to what? Annual kudos from Tri Tas and maybe a few dollars prize money.

Sure, race practice and the intensity of racing is great training, but not at this stage of my program, a fact that was probably realized by a lot of my more experienced training partners - hence the big names missing from the entry list on the day.

Latrobe starts with a 400m swim in a river that's about 20m wide. Imagine almost 100 people trying to get around three buoys in that space and if you come up with an image akin to a very wet mosh pit, you've got it about right. Melissa even asked the race organisers if we could have men's and women's waves, but the answer was just 'no' with no good reason. Anyway, after being kicked, punched, swum over and drinking half the duck pond, I got out a mile behind Grace Row-Smith and Melissa, and close behind Kate and Millie Chapman. After a terrible bike mount (there's another thing that needs work) I managed to overtake all of the girls but it wasn't long before I started feeling the previous day's training in the legs and Melissa and Kate proceeded to overtake me and ride far, far away into the distance. After messing up the second transition as well, I got onto the run and ran reasonably strongly to pass Melissa and finish in 2nd place, though well behind Kate.

Not a bad result and I'm by no means saying I'm unhappy with 2nd - it's more the race preparation and performance I wasn't thrilled at.

The day befor the race I had done roughly an Olympic distance triathlon - after 3km in the pool with the swim squad I was persuaded to participate in the "Launceston 70.3" which entailed another swim in the pool, an hour after the first one, immediately followed by a time trial ride and then a run (45km/8km for me - the guys did 85/20). Then I went to work for five hours and then we headed straight to Latrobe. I felt like the walking dead I was so tired - NOT an ideal race preparation!

So what did I learn? I learnt that if you are going to race, you need to be 100% committed to the race, not just on the day but in the lead-up, and if you're not then you shouldn't bother racing.

I also learnt that you shouldn't just spontaneously join into other people's training just because it will be fun - yes it was, but it trashed me for the race. Yes Johnno, Trent, it appears I really can't have everything! I could have done the Launceston 70.3 and then a long ride and a swim on the Thursday, or I could have ditched the 70.3 and done well in the race, but not both. And given the focus is long course, the former would have been a far better option.

Having said all that, I still intend to race Beauty Point sprint tri this coming Sunday!! At least it's 750/30/5 and I can ride home :)

As an aside to the Latrobe race, it was my last race in the Cycle Torque & Coffee kit. I'm so grateful for the support I've had from the CTC team, for the opportunity to work with them, and all the wonderful people I met along the way. However times change, life changes and new opportunities arise as one has for me and I believe in taking opportunities with both hands.

I am very excited to join the Bike Central team this week. I'm assured I'm going to be turned into a "strong cyclist" which is also exciting, but I'm not sure who has the most work to do - the coach or the student! More training, more learning, as usual! It's going to be a lot more pleasant training on the new Specialized Ruby though. First proper ride on her yesterday - unbelievably comfortable and stable. Love, love, love it.

Speaking of coach and student brings me back to the point I wanted to make earlier.

I have probably waxed lyrical on this topic before but it warrants covering again.

Yesterday I was once again struck by how lucky and priveleged we are in northern Tasmania to have amazingly talented athletes who continually offer us advice, support and help with our own careers and aspirations. The generosity with which they donate their time and skills to further the sports that they love, for no obvious personal gain, continually astounds me. There are many that I have had the pleasure of talking to and training with, who I look up to and respect and hope to continue to work with. I know I'll forget someone here but some that I'd like to recognise include Craig Boon, David Brasher, Trent & Wade Hadley, Peter & Mollie Fraser, Joe Gambles, Rob, Kim & Jenny Gillard, Harvey Griggs, Sharon & Tim Gunton, Casey Mainsbridge, Ben Mather, Mark Matthews, Paul & Peter McKenzie, Mark & Louise Padgett, Paul Turner, Andrew Willis, Jen McMahon & Chris Zehntner.

Thankyou guys for your tireless efforts in either promoting and encouraging young/new sportspeople or for helping raise the bar for those of us who have slightly higher aspirations! That Tasmania punches far above its weight in producing top sportspeople is a reflection on your efforts and I hope that one day I will be able to do for others what you have done for me.

The start of a new season

I must make an effort to continue my blog because despite my 2011 worlds campaign being well and truly over, my career as a triathlete certainly is not... and all pro triathletes have blogs. So, I'll pretend to be one until I make it :)
It's been fairly well noted that I have had some setbacks since returning from America. I had two lazy weeks off after the race and then decided I would get back into training -well, swimming and riding since my hip was so injured and painful I couldn't run a step - so I didn't lose all of that hard earned fitness and could build on it for my next big race, the national long course championship at Falls Creek in February.
Of course you always feel terribly unfit when getting back into training but after a week and a half I was just starting to enjoy it again when I got knocked off my bike. One day in hospital and a couple more doing nothing at all, then gym only for about a week until I could start swimming again, and another few days until I got back on the bike.  Then it was back into unstructured training to just see how the body went along, and of course the fact that I didn't have any spare time to sit down and write a training program out (too much Christmas shopping to do! -oh and working 40hrs a week doesn't help either!)
December 11 was our first tri of the season at Beauty Point. It was a sprint distance race, 750m/20km/5km and because I couldn't run, I teamed up with "Dan the Man" Van der Vlist and entered the team category. We were called "Team Bike Crash" because his injuries from a bike crash prevented him from swimming and running.
I came out of the water with Melissa which I classed as a good swim for me, and then headed out onto the bike course into a stiff headwind. I still clocked about 35 minutes which is an improvement on last year's times (the BMC may have something to do with this) and an average of about 32km/h. Melissa, Kate, Hannah and I all rode within less than 30 seconds of each other. It was hard to watch the race draw to a conclusion without the power to be able to do anything about it though and I resolved: no more triathlons unless I can do the whole thing!

Of course Christmas is always the worst enemy of athletes, or at least ones with lots of family who like to cook, like me. It means time off training for travelling around various family members, lots of sitting around lazily, and far too much eating - especially bad foods!
I did get away with a couple of short rides and a short run on Christmas day though, and I have no one but myself to blame for eating too much Christmas pudding and chocolates.
It was back to work straight after Christmas and an attempt to quickly put together some training for the Bridport Olympic. The physio's advice was, don't even think about doing the Olympic distance due to my hip. However, always one to go against the best advice, I decided that as I managed to run for an hour a few days before the race, I would enter.
Lucky I did.
The Bridport water was beautiful although slightly choppy on the morning, which probably helped me come out of the water a little ahead of those who are good smooth water swimmers but find those kind of conditions a little daunting. After the first lap I was touching the feet of Paul Turner, which told me that either Tex was having a terrible day, or I was having a very good one. It was a bit of both, and Tex did pick up the pace when he saw me there, but I was stoked to come out with Steve Muir and just ahead of Roger Butorac.
Onto the bike and again a slight headwind on the way out but that made the return journey nice and fast. 1hr 9 minutes for the 40km - an average of 33.8km/h - and less than a minute behind Hannah, who wasn't going to run, so I had to be happy with that.
The run would be the test with very few k's in the legs beforehand. I could feel it - just heavy in the legs from being out of practice - but I still ran 43-something which was a nice surprise. It hurt though!
I was stoked to take my first Tassie win.

I had a huge training camp planned for the remainder of the week, while we would stay at Bridport with no work or distractions. But ironically I ended up spending three days completely motionless - the only thing I improved was my tan.
By the time real life resumed there was barely enough time to scrape together a few sessions to tide me through to the next race, especially considering all my old school friends decided to come to town for time out from their glamourous mainland lives, and socialised for a change.
Perhaps this relaxed, improvised start to 2012 training is doing something good for me, because I chalked up my second win of the season, first state series win and first triathlon State Championship on Sunday at Seven Mile Beach.
Now sprint distance is certainly not my forte and I went into it knowing that I would have to have the race of my life to beat Kate Pedley, so I was a bit nervous.
The start was late, the water was cold, but at least it was calm - never been taught how to swim in the surf! Also because there were so many people (many mainlanders seeking selection for the sprint worlds in NZ this year) we were impromtu-ely split into two waves - men and women. This worried me as I knew I wouldn't have any feet to draft off! Sure enough just after the first buoy I came into the lead which initially surprised me but was quite good fun.  I weaved my way through the tail-end males and managed to hit ALL of the buoys, which just proves how unco I am! Or that I have good aim?!
Unfortunately Hannah couldn't race so it was quite a novelty to come out of the water first. I passed Johnno in T1 (he was putting on his socks!) and hit the bike course with Dan Van der Vlist. Usually he speeds away from me but we played cat and mouse from a legal distance for the entire ride. There was a fair bit of drafting going on - partly due to the numbers on such a small course I suppose, but although it sucks, if you actually drop back like you're supposed to, it's not unavoidable. Anyway that aside, I came off the bike just ahead of Dan and decided I was going to have a lightning fast transition because I needed all the time I could get between me and Kate. But I was shaking so much it was hard to put my shoes on!
Once out on the run course I had to really try to calm my breathing down and try to settle into some kind of sustainable rhythym. At every turn I could see Kate running, much faster than me, catching me very quickly... but I thought about what Hannah had told me, if you believe you can win, you can.... and I did! I managed to hold Kate off, by maybe a minute or so, but it definitely took all of my resolve, and I did not relax until the finish chute. My lack of running really meant had to push myself harder than I thought possible, because I wanted to the win very badly. Not least because the prize was a $500 travel voucher which will come in handy for the worlds :) Because of that I really felt proud of myself at the end of the race.

I would like to thank mum, dad and Johnno for taking me down south and supporting me, my sponsors Cycle Torque, EFM and Harvey Griggs, Tri South for the race & Andrew Jones for the prize, everyone who competed and volunteered, Riverside swim squad for helping me with my swim, and Hannah for coming and cheering despite not being able to race.Your support means the world to me!

Latrobe sprint is next on the 26th of Jan. What a great start to 2012 - let's keep it going.

ITU Long Distance World Championships Las Vegas/Henderson 2011 Race Report

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36447717/ITU%20Long%20Distance%20World%20Championships%20Las%20Vegas%202011%20Race%20Report.pdf


eek sorry about before, little technical hiccup there, I hate computers. But thanks to the lovely Julie we now have race report published to the net :)

Build training done

Well it's been a while since my last post but I don't think anybody is really reading my blog anyway so I'm sure that won't matter.
Some more amazing performances from Australian triathletes over the weekend - particularly Crowie, Kona title #3 (2wks after winning 70.3 world champs in Vegas). He is actually entered in the ITU long course as well so in a month's time I'll be able to say 'I've raced on the same course at the same time as a 3x Ironman world champion'.
That's right the countdown is on, less than a month to go and I'm already nervous. I shouldn't be, as Johnno assures me that no one who has supported me has done so with the intention of me winning - more to go for the experience. But I definitely don't want to let anyone down after so many have invested stacks of money, time, help and in-kind donations in this campaign.
However no matter what happens on race day I have already gained stacks out of the last 7 months. I have improved my swim a lot, thanks to Trent & the Riverside squad - still a lot of room for improvement though. I would like to get my 4km under an hour within the next year or so.
Bike, yes that's improved too, no special formula there just getting out on the road as much as possible. Time on the bike is the most important thing when you've only been riding a few years, but in the coming year I will have to put in actual hard workouts to improve! Oh and the CTC BMC and the (re)Tardiz - they help :) I still get amazed by the bikes on the pro Ironman women field though - they're riding 180km in the time it takes me to do 120!
Run, that's probably gone backwards in the last 6 months, but my thinking was that no matter how hard I trained for it I'd probably only better my time by a couple of minutes, and I had more to gain in the other two sports. So next year it will need a big focus to cut 10 - 15 minutes of my marathon time.

This weekend was my last in the final "Build" training block. It involved sandwiching a crazy workday Saturday between a fish shop ride with intervals and a 2hr hilly run, and yesterday pumping out 4 x 30km TT on the bike (Rosevears - Bridgenorth - Exeter - Rosevears) and a 15 min run off the bike (mother nature did her best to put a dampener on things but I wasn't having my last major training day ruined, it just ended up with an extremely long rest interval in the middle of the day - but if the cricketers break for lunch why can't i?)
So that means this week is a rest  & test week... resting is always harder than training! But I am going to have to get used to it if I want to be fresh on race day.
Well that will do me for today, just a short one! Maybe some more tomorrow :)

Big Day

Well the weather gods certainly smiled on my Big Day training session on Saturday.
Basically Big Day is a "dress rehearsal" for the race - only it wasn't "dress" because I haven't got my team uniform yet! Oh, and you get to have a break between disciplines, which was nice after the swim but probably a disadvantage after the ride.
So the day started at 4.30am as this will be the time I get up for the actual race. That was an early start! I practiced my race breafast - porridge with honey, protein powder and peanut butter (not as gross as it sounds), a cup of tea and an Up&Go. Listened to some music, made up all my drink bottles and packed the car... and fed the dog and emptied the dishwasher which hopefully I won't have to do on race day!
The biggest struggle of the morning was getting Johnno out of bed (just kidding baby ;) ) and on the way to the pool I kind of rememberd I had forgotten to organise with anyone that we were going to be there (as it's before opening hours) so thanks Anne for letting us in :)
After 2.5km the swim seemed to be going on for ever but eventually the 3.5km signal came from the end of the pool and I was able to put a bit extra in for the last 500m. I was a bit disappointed though that my time came up as 1 hour 8 minutes 22 seconds - every time I do a 4km TT it takes 1 hour 8 minutes to the minute - never any faster!
Sharon and Tim Gunton put in a great effort to swim about 2.5km but Dan Van der Vlist was the star of the show, swimming 1km further than he ever has before and making the whole 4km in 1 hour 20 minutes. Awesome.
Then it was time for a snack and a sit down. At 9 we met Dan and his two friends Chris and Tim in the car park and we set off on the ride portion of the day in cool but sunny conditions and NO WIND! For once! It was great. I must've looked a complete fool in the (re)Tardiz helmet with my TT bike going through town, but it was great once we got to some of the big downhills and the flats. The course was Rocherlea - Karoola - Pipers River - Pipers Brook - Lebrina - Scottsdale - Bridport. With the exception of the Fingerpost hill out of Rocherlea, all the way to Lebrina was fairly fast though undulating. The big hills between Lebrina and Scottsdale were the killers! Scottsdale to Bridport was also fast despite the reasonable headwind. Johnno did aid stations at Pipers Brook and Scottsdale which was extremely helpful (probably more helpful than all the photos he took of me suffering).
At Bridport I was tempted to ride up and down the street a few times to make the Garmin say 120km as it was only sitting on 116.6. But not too tempted. Plus, the requested chocolate milk was waiting...
After that and a jam sandwich, mixing around in my stomach with E3, Gatorade, Gu chomps and apricot bites from the ride, I felt like I was about to vomit, so luckily there was a break between legs as I needed a lie down in the sun.
Johnno went to do reconnaissance of the run course - to check it was possible to run the loop I wanted to run - and when he got back we decided to set off immediately after a 45min rest instead of the 90 minutes stipulated by Joe Friel in The Triathlete's Training Bible and Your Best Triathlon (currently on loan from the generous Suse Dowling).
Sharon and Tim did a great job to run 10km off their own bike ride, but the boys were out for the count - the hills had broken them!
Johnno decided to run the first lap with me which was lucky or I would've walked it all I think, especially the hills. As I said to him "I didn't know my legs weighed 100kg" - well that's how they felt.
Because I still felt like I would walk, I persuaded Johnno to do lap # 2 with me as well despite the fact that he has a really sore shin :( 13km was up by the end of that lap and he was out so I had to go it alone. Surprisingly I made it up all the hills without walking, but because it was a trail run with roots and rocks and I had very tired legs (not a good idea) I had a fall or two on that lap. The loop was good though with lots of variety and it certainly made the time go quickly. My legs were feeling back to normal by that stage but I was still running a lot slower than I hope to in the race. I'm hoping that with a taper and some fresh legs, as well as running straight off the bike, I might be able to go a bit faster in Vegas.
The last lap is always easy because you just say to yourself 'one more step = one more step closer to the end'! And sure enough the end arrived before I knew it and I was almost disappointed my Big Day had come to an end. I had really enjoyed it. Possibly more than I enjoyed then getting into the ocean as part of my recovery. I felt like the footballers in the Herald Sun, half naked at St Kilda beach in the middle of winter, shivering. I wasn't half naked but my feet went numb! It was a good move though as it certainly helped my legs feel better.
I had had visions of having to send Johnno to the shop to get tea because I couldn't walk after the day but I actually felt pretty fine. So we went and got stuff for burritos (yum) and champagne to celebrate. Unfortunately I couldn't eat nearly as much as I thought I would want to, and I didn't make great company because I was so tired. I nearly fell asleep at the table before going to bed at about 9pm. (much earlier than usual).
Sunday was the first day I can remember where I did not have ANY training whatsoever to do. And we weren't at home so no housework or anything! A whole day to do nothing?! That never happens!
I couldn't sleep past 7.30 anyway (that's already a 2-2.5hr sleep in from normal) so I got up and ate the leftover burritos for breakfast! Yuck! But I was hungry! Then I enjoyed sitting in the sun for a while with the naughty Maxy dog who had chewed up his lead and a wooden seat during the night.
Turns out we're so unaccustomed to doing nothing that after Dan and Chris left to ride back we had nothing to do but pack up, clean the shack and head home to unpack and do the washing etc! Boring!
Hopefully the two days of perfect weather don't mean that to balance out we're in for weeks of rain now.
Anyhow it was a great weekend, I was stoked with how Saturday went (with the small exception of my lack of run speed) and it was a great confidence booster for the race. The nutrition plan went well except for stomach cramps etc on the run, which is pretty usual for me, and may have been caused by the chocolate milk which won't be a factor in the race.
My recovery went heaps better than I'd expected, barely any leg soreness or general fatigue at all yesterday. Kind of freaked me out actually. Like all obsessive Type A triathletes I love a little bit of soreness to remind you that you've worked hard, you're gaining fitness and you've earned a day off. When you feel fine, a day off seems lazy!
Also, now that the Big Day is over, it seems a heck of a lot closer to Race Day, which makes me a little nervous. I'm more excited than nervous I suppose as I feel like I will be prepared and am really happy with how the training has gone. But everywhere I look people are talking up the Vegas course like it's the hardest thing ever (see latest Triathlete magazine for good example). Even Joe Gambles said there's not a flat spot on it. And the wind is supposed to be hideous. If that's not enough to make you nervous, what is? But, I guess everyone has to face the same course and conditions, and you can only do the best with what you have on the day. So we'll see.
Three hard weeks of training to go... two taper weeks... and race 'week' 5 days. So down to 5 weeks 5 days. I had been avoiding that countdown, but there it is.
Hope you all enjoyed the lovely weather and got some good training in too. :) Til next time, Holz

People, training, and fundraising

Wow, what a weekend! Wasn't the weather just spectacular! Fingers crossed it continues until next weekend for the Big Day.
Saturday saw our fundraising Garage Sale held at Mel and Dan's. What an effort from the two of them - I really can't speak highly enough of them. No amount of thanks is enough. They cleared out their garage, put up with people dumping crap on their lawn for a week, spent an entire night setting up the sale and pricing all the items, sold things all day and then cleared the leftovers out and took them to Vinnies and returned their garage to its former glory. All this while I continued training :(
Another invaluable helper was Sharon and her coffee-making skills, along with Hector who also helped out and donated many items. Sharon also scored some free goods from Baker's Delight which came in handy when we got hungry. Natalea, Bill and the ladies from my aqua classes donated some really worthwhile items. Johnno's contribution was to make us laugh with his antics on a broken scooter, and cook some yummy snags.
All in all we raised more than $450 which covers our return flights to Sydney.
On the 30th will be our next fundraiser, a trivia night at Tamar Yacht Club from 7pm. $15 a person. Come along for some fun, nautical themed trivia, yummy homemade supper and the bar will be open.

As far as training went on the weekend, I was down for a short recovery ride Saturday morning which to my frustration (I always make the mistake of going with a bunch) turned into a 1hr45 harder-than-recovery session. Johnno & I then had to do the LAC Hillwood 10km feature race later that day which is always a challenging one. Didn't have much left in the legs but still managed to scrape into second-fastest female place. I did miss a swim session in the afternoon, but we just don't have time for everything do we!
Yesterday I allowed myself a bit of a sleep in (til 7.45am) then got up to enjoy the beautiful sunshine and ride 110km from home to Pipers River, across to Pipers Brook, down to Lebrina and back through Lilydale. A tough ride taking 4.5hrs. Then it was off the bike and into the runners for a jog down to the Tailrace and back. Never easy after a long ride! A good solid training day. It was pretty hard to get up for work at 5am though I can tell you.
So week 1 of my last training block finished successfully with 25 hours ticked off.
Now just need the energy to maintain that for another four weeks or so and then I get to start resting up! Sounds good in theory, not sure how it will go in practice though. Luckily I will have a bit more work on my plate then to take my mind off things.

So while I'm on the bandwagon - this seems to be the only chance I get to blog - there are a few other people I need to mention.

Mark Connelley and Craig Boon from EFM Health Clubs have let me use their gyms for free for I can't remember how long, which is a huge help. I'm not big on training inside but Windsor is a lovely new gym with all the gear yet not too big or busy. And you always get to have a good chat with Craig - mostly running related!

As well as businesses there are a lot of individuals who have helped me get where I am today, and where I am going in less than two months.
I might be waxing lyrical about this but Melissa and Dan have been a pillar of fundraising strength. While I was losing my mind at the trivia night, Mel was making sure everything was running smoothly and entertaining everyone. She also put together all of the songs and videos, and generally organised the whole night.

Mum and Dad also helped out with the trivia night and are organising the second for me. This takes a lot of pressure off me while I'm trying to train/work/do the housework so I am very grateful :)

It goes without saying that my husband Johnno, who is also my running coach, mechanic and all round number one support crew, has put up with a lot in the last few months. A wife that is rarely home and when she is, usually tired/grumpy/completely stressed out, is not fun! Hoping it is all worth it come November and then I'll let him have a bit of time for cars, sheds and things :P

Anyway, regardless of how the race goes - and we shouldn't put too much store in the result of a race anyway, because there are so many variables outside our control - I know I have learnt stacks and gained a lot of confidence throughout the last 6 months of training, which will pay off in the future.
Thanks for your interest (if you're reading all the way down to this bit you're obviously very interested or very bored!) - til the next blog... Holz

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