Back Online

It has been a long time since my last blog post.  One week after Noosa, I injured my back and had 10 days of no training. After 5 physio and 3 chiropractor appointments I am now back to full training, but a lot of fitness and conditioning has been lost in the meantime.

Elaine has also been out of action due to a skin cancer removal procedure performed the day we got back from Noosa. Amazingly the scar is already invisible but she still cannot swim for another week because the goggles would press on the exact spot where the skin cancer removed from. She also missed over a week of riding and running to avoid sweat getting into the wound. While she is back to full running and riding now,  the break has certainly put her fitness back.

Another reason for the break in posts is that I now have 6 athletes in my stable (8 if you include Elaine and me). I am definitely at capacity in this regard and it makes it hard to find time for other things such as updating blogs (I'm currently writing this on the train using my new Samsung Galaxy S III phone).

Last weekend Elaine and I along with Mark and Stef completed the Kinglake ride. When I signed up I had very ambitious notions of posting the fastest time up the Will Walker Climb and being first rider to complete  the 115km distance. Disappointingly my body was not up to the challenge. Even on the smaller undulations before the main climb my heart rate was spiking much higher than expected. Once on the Will Walker climb my perceived effort was telling me it was easy, but a heart rate of 170bpm was indicating otherwise. I resisted the urge to charge off the front scared that I would blow up after 2 minutes and just look silly. sure enough, even sitting in the pack I soon found myself struggling and dropped off the pack after only 2.5km of climbing (the hill was 7.5km long). With 6 riders in the lead pack I ended up only being 7th rider up the climb. After the climb I regrouped with a second pack of 4 riders, with 2 or 3 riders in the lead pack ahead of us. With the pace my group was setting, it seemed like they were determined to catch back up. This was eventually too much for me and at 70km mark I dropped off and continued on riding solo. S couple of riders from behind caught and passed me with only a few kilometres to go, so I am guessing I finished in about 10th place (out of 800 or so riders). At first I was very disappointed in how much fitness I had lost, but overall my effort was not too bad. After being completely wiped out for the rest of the day, it was fairly obvious I gave it all I could.


Elaine did well in the shorter 66km event even with the break in training, with Strava showing it was her fastest ride on that route. Although like me, she was wasted for the rest of the day. We both went to bed early and had a rare sleep in on Sunday morning. Mark (115km ride) and Stef (66km ride), both did very well. I didn't see Stef on the day, but Mark had a very big smile on his face as he rode down the finish shute. I'll write more about each of my athletes progress and season goals in a future post.