Ready or Not

It is Tuesday in London and our races are late morning Friday, so not long now. It has been a very busy week and a half, so there has not been much time to think about the race. But now that we are settled in our London apartment with our bikes finally unpacked and reassembled the event is beginning to feel very close.

Last week was quite hectic with packing, organising last minute trip details and trying to finish off tasks at work before disappearing for a few weeks. On Monday I commuted to and from work by bike to get in a bit of extra training, Tuesday morning we swam and Tuesday night we did a run intervals sessions at the Sandringham Athletics track. My shoulder had been improving slightly but was still too sore to do the full swim session (or put in any real efforts). With my knee still not 100% I skipped a hard ride on Wednesday morning and also skipped the Wednesday night swim due to my shoulder (and the fact we needed more time to pack). The plan was to get in a last run on Thursday, but we were both caught up at work and missed this session as well. After 2 days of no training I managed to swim Friday morning and then get in an easy 7km run before we headed off to the airport (Elaine was too nervous and excited to train). No where near the last week of training I was planning before flying out, especially when we were going to miss a weekend of training due to the flying out early.

Thursday lunchtime I had my last massage. Of particular concern was my shoulder. They worked on this area so hard I now have a nasty bruise to show for their effort (it was a very painful massage). Throughout the flight my shoulder and knee ached on and off. I think the awkward sleeping position was not great for my shoulder, but it was feeling a bit better by the time we landed in Heathrow.

It is not wise to do hard training sessions the 2 or 3 days before and after a long haul flight. Ideally you would have an easy swim and run session each day and otherwise relax. High on the list of things not to do on the first 2 days after a long flight would be to take a long drive across the country. Saturday and Sunday were spent travelling to Nottingham, Northampton, Oxfordshire and then the Cotswolds. It was a very enjoyable and relaxing time catching up with Elaine's relatives and friends, just unfortunate about the amount of driving required to get there (not to mention the very dodgy GPS device provided by the car rental company).

The first two photos are of Nigel's house (an old friend of Elaine's) in Northampton. The bottom photo is the Manor House we stayed at on Sunday night.

Now back in London the situation does not feel a lot better. We need to go to race registration, bike mechanic check up, bike checkin (to transition), Team BBQ, Team dinner, Opening Ceremony and Parade of Nations. We also need to sort out transport for our bikes back to Melbourne (I'm told this involves filling out a 4 page form). All this happens on Wednesday and Thursday before our race on Friday morning - pretty much the exact opposite of a relaxing lead-in to the race with a couple of easy training sessions.