I remember this dance

Well I am nearly sort of ready for Geelong.

I did manage to get some packing done last night, but not quite as much as I would have hoped. The bike is all broken down (in pieces I mean, not actually broken), in a bag etc. Unfortunately the bike isn't in the bag that will be coming to Geelong and will have to be taken out of that bag and put in a different bag. Hence the sort of nearly ready.

Very annoying really, I recently paid money to get the zip on this bag fixed and at the time it did seem to be sorted. But then last night when I went to zip the bag up (after spending time putting the bike in it) the zip gave way and wouldn't, well, zip. Doubly annoying because the bag is a really nice one and I was already half way through my day dreams of how nice travelling with this bag would be. Just the standard boy and bag day dreams, running through fields of flowers in soft focus, that sort of thing. Not to be unfortunately.

Nothing against my normal bike bag, but it is just a bit old and a bit too used. Still, at least I know where everything goes and I remember all the steps to that particular dance. So packing it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. Just a pain, because packing a bike isn't all that much fun and doing it twice is certainly not twice as much fun. Plus it means that some of the time I spent packing last night ended up being a waste.

Tonight I will be up until the packing is done and I am hopeful that it won't be all night, since the flight to Melbourne tomorrow is an early one. It will get done though so I am not to bothered about that. It is just the bit between now and being packed that I am not looking forward to. Still I should be all good to get home early from work and hopefully I will be able to put a sizable dent into the packing before going out for a run this evening. Hopefully that will then free me up to get the rest knocked over and into bed at a reasonable time.

Training has gone nicely so far today. I am still coughing, but between bouts of phlegm build up and the subsequent coughing (aren't you glad you came here to read this), I am breathing pretty easily, almost normally. So I think things have improved another step. Physically everything else is normal, resting pulse is down etc. I am just feeling pretty tired, but I am hopeful of catching up on a fair bit of sleep over the next couple of days (although perhaps not tonight).

I had a swim this morning and it was one of the best swims I have had probably in a couple of months. It wasn't that I was feeling great, it was more that the swimming was feeling easy. I was feeling tired and making the times, as opposed to feeling good and missing them. I did get out early in the name of taper, but I know I could have finished off the set feeling as strong as I had started. Getting out early meant the swim was only 3.7km rather than 4.5, so I can live with that.

I have one last run tonight before flying out. It isn't a long one, but I am hoping it goes well enough and my cough doesn't get in the way too much.

I haven't travelled for a race since Bintan in September last year and there are some things I am looking forward to and some things that I had forgotten about and hadn't missed. I hadn't missed how you are so busy thinking about packing and flights and hotels etc that you don't have any mental energy left to spend on training, which makes every session a struggle motivationally since all you want to do is get through the session and back to what you were doing.

What I am looking forward to though is that feeling once you are there and everything has worked out and you can finally relax and enjoy the fact that you are there and it is just you, the course and the race.

Bring it on.

Oh yeah just a quick note. As usual I am not sure what interweb access will be like while I am away, so blog updates may be haphazard or even non existent. I will, however, be putting witty insights up on Facebook (wittiness is not guaranteed), so if you want to keep track of how the weekend is going then click on the Facebook link on the right (edit: whoops, by right I mean left).