Wind in the Willows

To be honest I am not sure if there are many willow trees along the section of the Swan River where I was riding this morning, but there are plenty of trees, so one of them might have been a willow. Whether there was willow or not, there was certainly plenty of wind.


This mornings session was another brick. Slightly different format to last week. This one being made up of a 10km ride and a 3.5km run times three. Being a larger number of shorter legs meant working from home wasn't really going to work. So with the aid of my irreplaceable wife we took the family down to a local park near the river and they had a play while I did the session. That way I could leave the bike with them while I did each of the run legs. All sounds fine and dandy in theory. But as mentioned above, this morning there was a wind. Not only did that make the brick session tricky, but it made the playground freezing. So by the time I was done, my wife was chilled to the bone and most definitely ready to be home. The session worked, but only just.

The brick went pretty well. It was a great simulation of real world conditions, where you don't always get the wind playing nice. I was doing my ride legs on a 3km stretch of fairly quiet road. Unfortunately the road went right into the wind and then right with the wind. Which made pacing a bit tricky. I wasn't about to blow myself up trying to hold my desired speed into the wind, so the outward leg was usually a little slow. But then coming home I was flying. Despite the tricky conditions I managed to nail my aimed for speed on each of the ride legs, which I was quite happy with. I would have liked the speed to have felt a little easier. But I will take what I can get. The running was nice and quick and that made up a bit for the difficult riding. This session was the last big one before Cairns. I am not sure if this session showed me that I am ready or not yet. The jury is still out on that one. I guess race day will show for sure. I am feeling pretty good, but I am not sure if what I am feeling is 100%. We shall see.

On a different topic, I lost another drink bottle yesterday. It seems that it has been a bad week to be one of my drink bottles. This one got lost when I dropped it while riding. I was holding it loosely while on the aero bars and dropped it when I hit a bump. I was doing a circuit of hill repeats at the time and knew I would be back at the same spot in about 10 minutes, so I didn't bother stopping to get the bottle. But by the time I got back to the spot on the next lap, the bottle was gone. Somebody else had picked it up, and presumably taken it home. When I told my wife, her reaction was, 'who would want one of your scungy drink bottles', and I would have to agree. This bottle had been one of my bike drinking bottles for the last 6 months or so, so it was pretty hammered. Not sure who picks that sort of thing up. Oh well, I luckily I have the odd spare drink bottle sitting around the house.

Day off in Perth tomorrow. Hooray. I would say I feel bad for all those people in the other states who don't get holidays, but if I am being honest I don't. If you aren't in Western Australia, enjoy work tomorrow. I will be enjoying my sleep in.