Merry Christmas

It's the Sunday before Christmas and the 2nd day of my 11 day break from work - 3 public holidays and 3 days forced annual leave mixed in amongst 2 weekends. My first real holiday (other than long weekends) since starting my new job 10 months ago and I'm really enjoying the time off, especially since the first 4 days are being spent with my kids.

Training has been going well with only one blemish last Sunday. I was feeling a little fatigued after the 18.5km run the day before. The first half hour was spent battling a headwind that was gradually getting nasty. And then the heavens opened up and I was suddenly drenched. Realising I was not really enjoying this training session, I turned out and rode home, resulting in my planned 4.5 hour ride only last 60 minutes. Elaine's missed a few more sessions, but managed a long run of 16km on Thursday and a 60km ride yesterday.

Tomorrow morning is a special Bayside Triathlon Club Event called the Ben Griffin Classic - 154km ride with Sprint and KOM points. This will be similar to the Bayside Classic event I did in August - where I scored 3rd overall in the King of the Mountain (KOM) classification. Four months later I'm in much better condition, but the ride is an extra 34km longer and long distance is not my friend. The toughest climb (and my best chance for good points) from the August ride - Arthur's Seat, is not used in this ride. Instead we will do Bradford Rd - a climb I don't particularly like and it will be much further into the ride so I'll be pretty stuffed by then. But that's the course so I can't complain and yesterday I climbed Balcombe Hill 20 seconds faster than I did in the August, so this will be the hill I'll put most of my focus into.

As expected when training starts to ramp up, I've got lots of aches and pains. Of particular concern is my knee, back and very tight hamstrings. However I have no actual injuries, so I should be grateful. My friend Peter (his blog) has been suffering chronic achilles problems for the last 4 or 5 months (not long after he signed up for Ironman Melbourne - his first Ironman). Another Ironman virgin is Mark who I have been coaching since April. Training went remarkably well until a slight hamstring strain in November suffered during a basketball (not part of his training program). Luckily the soreness went away quickly and training was back on track until he got sick last week and then yesterday hurt his achilles playing golf (again not part of his program). One of the hardest aspects of Ironman training is getting to the start line. Hopefully both Peter and Mark will recover soon.