Post-virus, pre-Epic

I've been in Melbourne for three days staying with Liz, Ian and William (thanks guys!), and I've steadily been recovering. On Monday I broke the 12 day moratorium on training (on some days I couldn't walk round the house without difficulty let alone consider training) with an easy 2km swim. It helped with the jet lag too. On Tuesday I managed a 5km easy jog and did 3km in the pool. Today I felt ten times better for it so I eased out a 40 minute run, 3kms in the pool (albeit still sluggish) and an hour on the bike (the first ride in 2 weeks). Its all just to make sure I am working again while trying to avoid a relapse. Seems like I am on track to full health again. Everythings still a bit of an effort but it seems to be an order of magnitude better than the day before so I think it'll all be ok for Epic - fingers crossed I'll be back to 100% - and VERY well rested, just minus 2 weeks of training and plus a few extra kilos. Tomorrow I get on the plane to Christchurch - have three days to carry on getting back into the swing of things and remind my body that it likes this stuff before the fun begins.

Lessons in endurance

Staying with Liz and Ian has been an eye opener. I thought I had loads of energy, but William (a few weeks short of 2 years old) can run circles round me! He does take afternoon naps, which may be key - I might give these a go over the next few weeks. The commitment and dedication of Liz and Ian are also a bit of lesson - am trying to learn in order to apply to training :) I've also been renamed (rather unflatteringly) Toady as this seems easier to say than Toby. Will definitely get some photos tomorrow and post them...

This week's training has gone well - nearly completely on track. The lack of a good nearby pool has hampered volume swimming, but that all gets fixed from monday when I'll be 5 mins from a decent pool in Geelong. I'm pleased with the new schedule so far - I'm doing a lot more specific stuff and it feels like every session has a purpose, whereas before more often than not I'd just start a session and see what it turned into, trying to accumulate overall mileage (especially on the bike) rather than worry about pacing etc. Having said that, this time last year I'm not sure I would have been able to do such specific workouts most of the time.

Off to the You Yangs state park tomorrow - I'm riding up (gets the scheduled 2 hour ride done), might do the run there too - sounds like there might be some hills :) Apparently they allow open fires (rather unusually) on some of the sites there, so we're going armed with marshmallows.

Oz week one

G'day! Arrived thursday morning, but jet lag had the best of me for a couple of days. Its still spring here, so weather's a little variable - but yesterday was a cracker at 29 degs - took advantage with a beautiful ride out to Geelong. Liz and Ian (and 2 year old William) are off camping for the weekend so I could recover from jet lag without feeling too antisocial. Am staying at their place in Williamstown - a suburb of Melbourne. The town itself is on a peninsula, so there's lot of seafront, boat jetties, nature reserves etc to run through (and no hills!). Just getting ready to head off for a run down the coast to Altona and back. The week's been a bit of a right off for decent training, but starting the new regime tomorrow (again - I tried to start it this week but flying half way round the world wrote off more time than I'd anticipated!) so no worries.