Trains, Travels

Posting may be a little bit erratic over the next few weeks as I’m heading off to New Zealand. I don’t mean to imply that they’re backwards there, but I’m not sure on when and how I’ll be accessing the internet!

The main reason for the trip is to attend Epic Camp. My second time after the camp in Italy back in July. I have been warned how it can be the second camp where you really do silly things. After all with one out the way I know I can complete it, but what I really want to know is how much further can I take it? I’m sure it’ll be good fun though expect to find me pretty wrecked by the end of it! I want to make it clear I’ve no intention of being sick this time, none at all. I’m going there healthy and fit and ready to find out just how much the body will take.

Before all that nonsense I’ve a little over a week on the North island staying with a mate in Wellington. Looking forward to some good riding and some good coffee! Can’t wait! I’m seeing the 3 week trip as a great opportunity for a really solid block of cycling. Hopefully I’ll get plenty of Ks in and under some decent challenging conditions to make them honest. I may even have to break out some of the cold weather gear again!

I’ll also try to get a few decent pictures on route and a few posts up of some nice epic rides. Aside from this I’m planning to write up my thoughts on my first 4 week training block of the new season. There’s some good and a bit of a pep talk on a few issues for me! Just how close the next Ironman is has started to dawn on me. Certainly helped me put the hammer down on today’s ride!

I let this go under the radar for a while, because until the horn went off at 7:50 this morning I really wasn’t that excited about another race. This time race 4 in the local sprint tri series. Again hosted up in Robina, but a slightly longer course (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run). Despite the reluctance with which I went along I finished up really enjoying myself. Not particularly because of performance, but having the opportunity to race and push myself a little was good fun. Not that I was well prepared in any way, shape or form!

Allow me to indulge in the age old tradition of providing my excuses for performance. Since my big day in the saddle I haven’t done any really large days of training, but I have still trained solidly. Friday I cruised around on the bike at an embarrassingly low pace. Though I did ensure I put a little effort in so the bloke commuting on his mountain bike didn’t keep up with me, I have some dignity! I also stopped off on the way home to finally try one of the muffins at Barchino. I realise it’s unlikely many people reading this will ever go to the place, but if you do – the muffins actually look better than they are. Sad, but true. The coffee was good and free thanks to my tenth stamp on the loyalty scheme.

The only other session on Friday was a trip to the pool. Maintaining the theme of poor time management for the day I went during peak hours. Mostly I sing the praises of Aussie pools – size and availability of lanes is excellent. Especially if your lifestyle lets you go when only the elderly and unemployed are free. What I learnt is that Friday evening is busy with squad swimming leaving at most 4 lanes free. Ok, I realise by UK standards that’s practically an empty pool, but I’ve been spoilt lately. For the first time I had to share a lane with people who interfered with my workout. Mostly the frustration of not being able to turn on the wall because they left no space and I’m not mean enough to tumble turn into someone. Still if I’m honest I still managed to do a really good interval session mixing paddle work in there despite all of this. Certainly the hassle of having one interval in a set of 12 interrupted by the fat, slow man in the lane is nothing compared to home.

Not content with badly managing my time on Friday I carried it over into Saturday. I wake up early as intended planning to get out on a long run and then the long run fear hits me. I can’t really explain it, but I find it so hard to get out on the long run at times, feeling my legs are too tired and I’ll be forced to walk! I arsed about on the internet instead and finally kicked myself into gear by going back to the pool! This time though no paddles as my shoulders were starting to hurt. Instead a nice big endurance set and another 5K knocked out. Oddly the slight soreness in my right shoulder was helpful in forcing me to properly engage the lats.

I got back from the pool and headed straight off to Yoga which was mercifully the easiest session I’ve been to! Lots of focus on stretching and a fair bit of core work it was just what I needed. We finished with a single meditation on the sound of om for those interested in that side of things. I did wonder if we were too pressed for time to meditate on it any more? Still much as I can’t get into the spiritual side to yoga it does relax me. Given I was spending the day rushing about it was really appreciated. I headed straight home and had a very lazy lunch. Not in the relaxed, indulgent sense of the phrase. I made a bowl of porridge, ate some fruit and some tuna straight from the tin. What? That got me some carbs and protein!

I finally overcame the long run fear and got myself out on the road. As I mentioned after last weeks long run the plan was to run South this time to learn more about the potential to run one end of the coast to the other. Unfortunately the mission had to be aborted about 50 minutes in at Palm Beach as it started to drizzle. Too much time in the heat and sun has clearly softened me to typical British conditions as I quickly turned round and headed north again! Reaching Palm Beach in 45 minutes makes me suspect it’s at most 90 minutes to Point Danger from Mermaid Beach so I think The Spit to Point Danger would come in under 3 hours fairly comfortably. It’s potentially a fun long run, though I now need to work out the logistics of getting to the starting point and back again!

Back from my run, a couple of handfuls of dried fruit to eat, a very quick rinse in the shower and it was off to Pete’s gym for a massage. Like I said poor time management was a theme for the past two days. This weeks massage rated much lower on the pain scale and not for want of trying. Relatively my legs aren’t so bad and the little knot in my right quad is finally gone. My right shoulder was fun. Pete asks me to let him know when he hits the good spot which basically means where the pain is most excruciating! Generally my swearing makes it pretty obvious anyway and once it’s found he just pressed down harder. And that was it, race prep done!

That was a very long way of explaining that I wasn’t fresh for the race. Still I’d entered and I’ll give it my best shot whatever. By handily being a difference distance to the previous course I can’t directly compare results. However my placement in my age group was 10th this time, though there were fewer people. I’m pleased that my relative swim placement was improved over my last effort, I certainly felt better in the water. Both my bike and run were a little off though. I’m not entirely surprised by this I felt a nagging ache in my left ITB throughout the race. I actually rode harder on my hill climbing session earlier in the week going by the powermeter file! And 19 minutes for a 5K run is pretty poor really. I didn’t quite have access to my top end, finding it hard to get and maintain my heart rate anything above 150.

Still I didn’t write all this up to make excuses. For a start I had a lot of fun and feel it was a good training session. I’ve come away wishing there were more sprint races like this available. I’d happily throw one into the mix every couple of weeks to get a bit of extra work in there. I’ve relaxed for most of the rest of today though I am planning an easy run in a little while. I have one more big day to come as the rest day on Monday has put this weeks training block a bit out of line. Then it’s off to New Zealand!

I’ll start with a brief lesson in the importance of attention to detail. This may not apply to you, but it’s something I need to learn for sure. When I got back from Western Oz I put the bike back together as usual. Then it’s a couple of easy weeks, kick back, not do much, certainly not on the bike (well except one hard ride, that was dumb too!) So there we are, time to start training and time to stop all that eating! Hit out on the bike a few times and you know this is a bit uncomfortable must be because I took that time off.

After a couple of weeks of sore hands I think maybe I’m not having to get used to spending hours on the bike again. Sure enough when I spend a little time and check my bars are tilted down a degree or two too far. That was it, adjust and no more sore hands! This would be fine if it didn’t take me another week to adjust the saddle angle to stop it digging into my right thigh so much! Or then a few more days on top to finally accept that the vague sensation that my saddle is too high is because it is too high. So now the saddle is 3mm lower and riding is a bit more comfortable. The bike is back where it was for months before and I no longer have to adapt!

The lesson: if find your recently reassembled bike doesn’t quite feel right it probably isn’t set-up right. The correct response is to spend the 5 minutes or so it takes to fix this and not to try and work through it!

Having let myself have a day off and properly put the bike back together I’ve been getting myself into a nice, big week of training. So started out with two solid 5 to 6 hour days with a bit of all 3 sports in then got to the high point of the week. My big day out was a 8:15 ride followed by a 45 minute run to make a nice round 9 hours total. There was supposed to be an hours swim in there first thing, but poor sleep this week made me take a little lie in. I was still up around 6, but used the time to get in a big, big breakfast. I figured I’d be needing it with the day ahead.

My rough plan was to ride down to Byron Bay then make my way back. Byron Bay is a destination beach, everyone goes there. You find this when you hit the queue of traffic on the turn off to the town. I visited last year, riding down, but getting a lift back. It was a trip notable for a lot of rain, dreary skies, and not one dolphin sighting despite assurances I’d see them. Yesterday however was another perfect day on the coast so I headed out to blue skies and sunshine.

The trip down the coast went quicker than expected. Aided by a slight northerly and the fact I wasn’t entirely sure how far Byron Bay was. It was also as rough as usual thanks to the casual Aussie attitude to road surfaces. The roads are quiet, the views spectacular, but they’re rough as. The equipment toll to the constant vibration and rattling has been spectacular so far. I wonder if I should be worried about the really loud creaking the bike makes when I climb out of the saddle! I arrived at Byron having suffered a slow puncture on route, but that’s about 1000km since the last one so I’m doing good!

With 5 hours still remaining on the clock and having stocked up on Coke and chocolate at a servo I took the long route back. This partly involved more of those rough roads, this time with a strong headwind that began to get on my nerves. Around about this point of the ride I had a small insight into my psyche. The ride time was reading about 3:40, I was pushing some decent power out into a headwind along the Tweed coast road. My legs hurt a bit as they pushed a big gear and were continually battered by the bumps in the road. I started to experience two sensation, firstly I was feeling quite hot and thirsty in the sun and secondly I needed to pee. Pretty simply solved right?

Well you’d think so anyway. I had three choices of fluids to deal with the thirst – some flat and now warm Coke, a small amount of rationed water and a bottle of Gatorade in my back pocket. The Coke wasn’t going to work that’s for sure, too sugary. I didn’t want to hit the water for a while so it would be the Gatorade. The thing is the bottle is still sealed in my back pocket I’d need to stop to open it as it’s a twist cap. But I need to stop to pee anyway right? It’s still pretty simple. The clock ticks on and I refuse to stop because I’m going pretty well and soon it’s 4 hours on the clock and I promised myself I’d just keep the effort up till 4. Only now we’re on the rough, hilly road to Mooball with a warning that there’s crop spraying ahead which doesn’t sound pleasant. I decide to push past this before I stop.

Except there’s no crop spraying happening and I’m still going, still thirsty and if anything need to pee even more! I’m pretty sure I’m past any potential crop spraying, but still now I’m getting picky about where I stop! I still prefer to be a little discrete about where I stop and piss at the side of the road. This is despite the fact that inevitably stopping for a pee break seems to attract cars to the quietest roads. So I’m hot, thirsty and in need of the toilet, but won’t stop until I find a good set of bushes. Of course I then hit a couple of towns which pretty much eliminates any chances of relieving myself for a while… 25km after I initially decided I needed to deal with the issues I stop and finally have the much needed drink. It’s a further 2km before I find somewhere suitable for the call of nature!

I think I learnt new things about my stubborness/stupidity. I think we all learnt I’m willing to pad out a post on the thin topic of urination!

To end an overly long story. I finished the overly long ride strongly and pretty satisfied and was even pleased to find a 45 minute run didn’t feel that bad after all that! It is all relative though. Since then I have been and still am very hungry. Today is an easier day though, I shall go for a leisurely ride in a short while, perhaps even stopping for coffee and cake (I am really hungry). A 5K swim set in the arvo to make up for missing it yesterday than finish with an easy hour of running. Then hopefully a decent night’s sleep tonight as that didn’t happen last night despite the effort of the day. Actually I think I was too hungry to sleep well, woke in the night and had to have a snack and then woke needing breakkie pretty early too!

On that note I’m hungry, must find food