Business as usual

Pretty standard Saturday morning long ride today. I am still not feeling 100%, but despite that the ride went well.

I haven't done a trip down the freeway for a little while, so when I was planning my ride this morning I thought I would head that way. It still isn't a great ride, but I am bit sick of my regular cycling routes, so I thought a trip along the freeway cycleway would be a nice change. Plus my session this morning was made up a large number of short intervals. It is the sort of session that the freeway cycleway works well for since you can just put your head down and go, no interruptions, barely even any corners.


The decision to head that way worked pretty well. There was a reasonable southerly blowing this morning which meant 75km of headwind as I headed to the end of the freeway. The headwind was a bit of a chore and I was tempted to turn on more occasions than I can count, but I got there in the end. The slog of the headwind wasn't helped by my cough which reared its ugly head a couple of times on the way south, at one point forcing me to stop for a couple of minutes until I was able to cough enough rubbish out of my lungs so that I could breathe again.

Once I turned I was praying that the tailwind was going to be as strong as I thought it should be, otherwise I was going to be in a bit of trouble. For once the tailwind lived up to my hopes and the trip back up the freeway was wind assisted, fast and a quite fun. As fun and as fast as the tailwind was though, the intervals where still pretty killer. By the time I got to the end of them each one was like a white hot poker of lactic straight to the quads.

By the end of the ride I was totally done. The effort paid off though, with a pretty decent ride, nice and quick. Another good confidence boost heading into Geelong. Just need my chest to clear now.

Speaking of racing and Victoria, Challenge Melbourne is on tomorrow. A trio of fast folk from Daryl's squad will be there. Stef Puszka,Jo Ellis and Tim Green (in his first race as a pro). So good luck to all of them. It sounds like it could be on the warm side, but other than that conditions look pretty lovely with lightish winds forecast. Nice day to go fast.