Sunday Dec 9 |
 | Note | |
| (rest day) |
| Jen entered the 12 hour MTB race as a Solo and I thought it'd be prudent to support rather than enter, mainly as the thought of riding for 12hours had minimal appeal. Amazing how seriously it was taken by the teams with marquees, tents, generators everywhere, even large-screen TVs and game boys to keep team-mates amused. Jen rode well even with our dodgey lighting system and rode between 42 and 56mins per lap (not including stops). 3 daylight laps then 11 night laps with her biggest stop of only 10mins. 12th overall, 1st female in Solo category. My biggest achievement was staying awake all night, not something I am normally very good at! It got down to about 11 degrees and with the howling easterly I even became tempted to ride a lap to warm-up. In the end I settled for jogging up and down a flight of 7 steps multiple times. i was absolutely shattered in the morning so fortunately I had Jen to drive me home when my double/triple vision became too much and I pulled over for safety reasons! (one of the few useful things of her usually working all night shift is the ability to stay awake when one shouldn't normally be able to!). I am going to try and ride a lap of the course hard in the daylight and see if I can get within 10mins of what the top blokes were riding at night. I'm not so sure I can... |
| Road Bike (Commute) 18:00 [0] 8 km (2:15 / km) | |
| shoes: Bike, Gary Fisher mtb |
| Sedate ride into the city to lie on the grass and listen to WA symphony orchestra do "Symphony in the City". Heaps of people there. Two funny human behaviour things were evident. 1) the habit of several rude people to talk loudly on their mobiles while wandering in little circles and waving to attract the attention of the person on the other end of the line trying to meet up with them. 2) a skinny older mother and her flabby husband who had a youngster with them still in a push-chair but not that babyish. Mummy fussed over him all night, wrapped him in blankies, padded him upright, fuss, fuss. Last piece of the night was 1812 overture and the organisers had managed to get some artillery pieces from the Army down alongside the crowd... needless to say the loud explosion of the guns going off panicked Mummy and they were wrapping mollycoddled baby up while Daddy used his hands to cover his ears for the duration of the piece. Just before the end the hands came off and they started walking off (and here's the best bit) EXACTLY as the piece comes to a creschendo and Every gun fired at once. That was great! I think Mummy wet herself with worry.
Nice strong warm easterly to push us home again, great evening, nice way to spend the evening after a day mostly spent asleep. |
| Note | |
| |
| Came home from 12hour to find a fish not quite behaving as I expected fish to behave. Are they supposed to float upside down and all lifeless-looking? It looked healthier than I felt at 8am though. Two left, these two seem to have coped with the forced move and car-trip and relocation a bit better... |
Saturday Dec 8 |
| Road Bike (River) 1:51:00 [3] 50 km (2:13 / km) | |
| shoes: Bike, Kestrel |
| Met Boltboi at U-dub for a ride around the river (and given his mental state in the last few days to prevent him slashing his wrists). I struggled with a sore back, (courtesy of digging a hole for Jen's fishpond and carrying rocks and furniture) and a strong sense of lethargy. Boltboi had ridden from Gosnells so was well warmed up. I drove about 75s to get there and did the minimum distance before going home to shovel more dirt around. |
Friday Dec 7 |
| Core Stability/Stretching 30:00 [4] | |
| shoes: Barefoot |
| Just Wil and I tonight and Jen came along and "did a Fletch" with a cursory plank and some stretching. Wil was soft, I pushed out an extra cardio loop and tried a bit more than normal. |
| Running 25:00 [4] | |
| shoes: Barefoot |
| Running bits. |
Thursday Dec 6 |
| Paddling (River) 40:00 [2] | |
| shoes: Ski, Mako 6 |
| Cold morning for this time of year, around 10 degrees. I of course wasn't prepared to admit it was cold and had to borrow Jen's jumper. She tried out her brand spanking Fenn XT and it was noticeably faster and more stable than the spec SLSC ski she'd been borrowing. I was sore in my glute and go the numb leg thing, probably from paddling with tired leg muscles after Tuesday's hills and Wednesdays awfully slow and inefficient jog/wander with the slowies. |
Wednesday Dec 5 |
| Road Bike (Commute) 14:46 [3] 6.7 km (2:12 / km) | |
| shoes: Bike, Kestrel |
| Couldn't train this morning as I'd booked the car in for a service and convinced myself that that meant I couldn't get anything done beforehand. Slept in till 7 then drove to service, then rode the midget distance to work on the race bike in full kit. |
| Road Bike (Commute) 15:00 [3] 6.5 km (2:18 / km) | |
| shoes: Bike, Kestrel |
| |
| Running 1:00:00 [2] 10 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: Brooks Beast |
| Very slow jog with Wil and two girls who came along for the first time. Luckily I'd brought Haggles along so he got a good run in the wind and rain, very much a winter type storm front. |
| Running 27:51 [3] 5 km (5:34 / km) | |
| shoes: Brooks Beast |
| The other 3 abandoned at an hour so I did an extra loop - spent some time reccying a new terrain loop near the old drive in, then ran a CW loop of Oceanic and Kalinda back to the pool. Hammies were pretty tight when I started out, but by the end were slightly worse. Must be yesterday's hill reps. Stupid hammies! |
Tuesday Dec 4 |
| Road Bike (Floreat ride) 1:36:00 [4] 49 km (1:58 / km) | |
| shoes: Bike, Kestrel |
| Nearly missed the ride today, the snooze function on the phone woke me up and I had to really rush to get out the house and get there on time. Very comfortable pace today for first 2/3 and I just hung around chatting at the back, nice still clear morning. Boltboi thought I hadn't showed I reckon! Gradually worked harder along McCabe St getting near to the front and was 4th up the golf course hill. Just before Iona there was a woman walking her Border Collie up to the road, she stopped and the dog sat and they waited. Not sure if it was Hoggster's Meg, or DanielIe's Bonnie. I was about 20m from her doing about 45kph down the slope when the dog bolted for the road!! I yelled, she yelled, and amazing the dog propped and spun left and somehow I missed it. There goes another life, the adrenaline surge afterwards left me shaken for a minute or two as the "what ifs" went through my head. Moved up one spot up Devil's Elbow and the UWA sprint was just a long solid effort gradually riding past people who were fading. |
| Running (Reabold) 18:00 [4] 4 km (4:30 / km) | |
| shoes: Brooks Beast |
| 5 reps up Reabold hill with Jen, Jess, Meg, Dawn and Wil. s-m-h-m-h
3.38 3.37 3.12 3.28 3.14
Found it tough, and not quite able to run hard the whole way up, just not fit enough to maintain an attacking pace. Was very happy to hold the last one close to the first hard one. |
| Running warm up/down 38:00 [2] 6.5 km (5:51 / km) | |
| shoes: Brooks Beast |
| W-up, c-d and recovery jogs. |
Monday Dec 3 |
| Road Bike (Commute) 24:16 [3] 11 km (2:12 / km) | |
| shoes: Bike, Kestrel |
| The short way to work, but pretty hard along the last 1.6km straight flat bit of road to try and get the average up! Over a 11k ride the last k and a bit I figured I might be able to give it a nudge up - pity about the E headwind, I held 40 for half of it, then faded as I went up the 5cm contour towards Alexander Drive. I notice the SW is well and truly in now, brilliant, can't wait for the slog along Mounts Bay road on the way home. Sigh. |
| Road Bike (Commute) 41:00 [3] 19 km (2:09 / km) | |
| shoes: Bike, Kestrel |
| Couldn't face riding along the river from Claisebrook to U-dub into the sea-breeze so at East Perth turned onto the cyclepath that goes along the Freo line and instead rode into the sea-breeze up hills instead of on the flat. Employed a route choice shaped like a ? when I left the railway which was a bit dopey. |