Back in the saddle

It was back into it this morning, with my first official post race training session. Just a nice simple spin on the bike. It would be nice to say that the session set my world on fire, with an epic performance, powering up hills, possibly an inspiring sunrise to really finish it off. But in reality the session was fairly mediocre. I felt a little flat on the bike and never really felt like I got into the ride. I have found that this isn't that unusual for a first session back. It tends to take my body a little while to get back into the groove. At least it wasn't raining.

We had a decent amount of rain last night, and I was worried it might still be hanging around this morning. But in the end my concern was unnecessary as the morning was nice and clear. The roads were still wet, but not too much and the rain had stopped the temperatures dropping to close to zero. So all up it was fairly nice riding conditions. My body just didn't come to the party. I am still struggling with my cough as well, which is really starting to drive me nuts. I am not sure how much of a part that played in the quality of my session. It certainly added to the misery levels though. Oh well the average sessions are just as important as the good sessions when it comes to race day.

My dislike of boot camps was reinforced a little bit today. I was riding down a hill towards the river when I saw a flock of little lights bobbing up the hill towards me. It looked like I was riding towards a little gathering of fairies, or at least what I imagine a gathering of fairies should look like. Not that I spend too much time imagining gatherings of fairies, but you get what I mean. Probably best to stop talking about the fairies thing now. Back to the boot camp. I figured pretty quickly that it was a group of people running up the hill towards me, but they were everywhere, some on the footpath, some on the left side of the road, some on the right. I felt like I was in one of those old video games where you are dodging through a field of asteroids or something, in the dark. At least they had lights on (hence the fairies) otherwise they would have been invisible. It just didn't seem like the smartest place, or the smartest way to be doing hill repeats.

Speaking of lights, there is one house I ride past sometimes that has these pretty cool lights on their front wall. The lights are mounted at intervals near the top of the wall and shine down towards the ground. I am not sure if this is the intention, but the combination of the lights and the design of the wall means that the lights do a great job of mimicking the look of lights shimmering on water. I always think it looks pretty cool. Unfortunately, every time I ride towards the house in the dark, I also think I am about to ride into the world's biggest puddle. I am sort of used to it now, but it has previously caused me to begin evasive manoeuvres before realising that there isn't actually a puddle.

On an unrelated note, if you feel your day needs an extra injection of awesome, then have a read of the following.

Manhattan Island Marathon race report

This is the race report put together by the head coach of my SwimSmooth squad for the Manhattan Island Marathon. For those people who haven't read some of my previous posts, the Manhattan Island Marathon is a 46km swimming race around Manhattan Island. As well as completing the race, Paul also happened to win it, which is a pretty massive effort. It is a very good read.