Sydney-siders do cycling

En route to Geelong I spent a couple of days in Sydney (thanks Lyndsey!), to get over jet-lag and finish off the off-season. Saturday morning, a local Sydeny tri squad, HERT, very kindly let me join in a group ride. This was an eye-opener in several ways. First up, it was a 6am start (something I don’t normally associate with cycling!) – on a Saturday morning, I wondered what I was getting myself into. We met at Centennial Park just after sunrise, and headed out southbound. I was impressed by their motivation so early on the weekend, but even more surprised by the route out of the city. After a leafy minute or two getting through the Park, we basically turned out onto a highway which fed into the motorway rolling south towards the airport. There were some hairy moments crossing feeder lanes, fly-overs, going through tunnels and with some early morning and rather less than understanding drivers, but once it started to rain again, and the ride really got entertaining. By the time we’d done the Botany Bay route and found our way back to a Paddington cafe, we were covered in grit and mud and soaked through. Luckily it was warm enough for this to be amusing rather than a soul destroying couple of hours on the road. My colleagues assured me that we hadn’t taken the scenic route that morning – a relief for the local riding! I’m sure there is good riding near Sydney, but that morning did remind me of the troubles of city living and the pain of getting out to any decent routes.

Much happier about riding now I’ve made it back to Geelong. A couple of minutes and out of the Great Ocean road seems like a good deal to me!

Hot hot hot

Its 9pm and its still near 34 degrees. Luckily I've been on a couple of fairly light training days with lots of pool work (my back is now markedly browner than my front... must do more backstroke!). The weather's set to break tonight sometime - just in time for a hard brick session tomorrow. Think I'm fully recovered from Epic... had a pretty standard week last week, only dropping a little of usual intensity and lowering the run load. Last couple of days have been fairly light so feeling refreshed and ready for the next round.

Post-Epic Recovery

Since Epic, I've made it back to Geelong and starting to feel more human again. First couple of days I did nothing (partly thanks to a pile of work that needed to be done) mainly due to the fact that my quads were in tatters. Wednesday I started back in with a swim and built slowly from there. Most of the sessions have been fairly easy, nothing longer than 2 hours. Total training time this week only hit 15hours. Finished off the week by doing the run leg for a team at HIM Geelong. It was just a training run for me, so I sat around 4 min kms for the duration, steady and fairly easy... that was more than I expected to be able to do by this weekend, so that's good. Part of me hated doing the run as I wanted to be racing it, but other parts of me (my legs) were quite happy to just watch. Tara Norton (from Epic) was down doing the race and cracke dout 5th. Didn't manage to catch up with her afterwards to find out how it felt, but I think that's a pretty good way to back-up Epic! Way to go Tara! I certainly wasn't in any state to go racing.

Time to head home

I'm heading home for tomorrow for 4 weeks... its going to be a shock to the system. Apparently its around 3 degrees C in London at the moment - compared to here where its mid 20s/low 30s with as much sunlight as you could ask for. At least it will feel festive!

Ending the training period here on a high - had an awesome day out yesterday - usually a rest day, monday was actually a big day's training this week as the fligths on wednesday and thursday mess up the schedule, and so I am trying to salvage as decent a week as possible around two days in a plane and imminent jet lag when I get home. Strangely, am looking forward to a few long runs in the cold...

The new place on Shannon Avenue has been hilarious -living with a bunch of triathlon and surfing nuts is great fun! Must leave my wife-beater and filthy language in Oz though (but the tan is coming with me)...

See you in the UK

Toby

Last week in Oz

Just a week and a half left in Oz before I head home for Xmas. I got to move out of my trailer today (thanks very much to local celebrity Leanne and co.) and enjoying my rest day catching up on emails, sorting flights, accommodation, races etc... Also watched What It Takes, and feeling very motivated. Luckily its the day off so no worries about me heading out of the door and smacking myself silly on the roads. Just a brief swim later and that's me done for the day.

Beasties in Oz

Photo as promised of William (above) who turned 2 this week.

Just finished week 4 of the new schedule. Settled into it and finding that the 'on' button for the pace intervals is coming a little more easily on the run and the bike. Weather's been beautiful - hot and sunny, with windy days to keep some of the rides interesting. Found a couple of good swim squads who are making hitting 20km a week in the pool fairly easy (and sociable!) - one of the squads seems to hit 5 km no problems, though the wednesday session after typically a 4-5 hour ride and 2 hour run finds me a little flat!!!

I'm staying in a caravan park round the corner from the pools and track, on the river which has kilometer markers along both bank paths, and - essentially - only 500m from a large supermarket :) Its perfect. Except for the MASSIVE spider that decided it wanted to live between the front door and the fly screen yesterday. Luckily it has now relocated - to where I do not care. I was reading in the local paper about a brown python (or something like that) found in someone's back yard in Victoria - over 2m long - I now eye large sticks on the road with suspicion, and at the open water swim yesterday there seemed to be a lot of chat about great whites... I think I prefer to live in ignorance.

Toby

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.

Off to Oz

Flying to Melbourne tonight (and tomorrow and the day after!) - only booked my flights on friday, so I've been a headless chicken for a couple of days sorting everything out. See you all soon!