I survived

I survived and have made it back from the BYL training camp. Owww.

The training camp was held down in the south-west dairy/orchard town of Harvey. Up until now I have associated Harvey with cows, oranges and being the home town of my friend Shao Wu. I will now also associated Harvey with hills.

The training camp started out yesterday with a jaunty little 195km ride from Harvey to the town of Collie, down to Donnybrook and then back again. 195km would be solid enough, but on top of that the ride also included about 2300m of elevation gain. It was a tough painful day, possibly one of the toughest rides I have ever done. Very pretty though.

Riding up to Collie is a very solid, mostly uphill 45km. Collie to Donnybrook is another 50km, which started off with more hills, more down than up, and then ended with a fun 30km rolling headwind section in Donnybrook. The trip back from Donnybrook to Collie was much more fun with the tailwind lending a hand, although the climb back into Collie was an effort. The final 45km to Collie started off with a bit of a grind, but ended up with a lot of fun as we got to ride down all the hills that we had ridden up earlier in the day.

At this time of year the hills of Harvey are lovely and green. Rolling through them was very picturesque, I just would have been happy with a few less of them.

Today it was time for a trip out to Logue Brook Dam, where some people headed off for a chilly swim and others did a bit of hilly trail running. I went with a trail walk/run, which went okay. Quite a bit slower than normal, part of that was my legs being smashed from the day before, part of it was the hills and part of it was the loose pea gravel surface. Turns out I don't like running on pea gravel. I haven't done much of it, but I just didn't feel like I was able to get any purchase. I managed to get through it though without stacking it, so I count that as a win.Very nice to be running somewhere new though.

After the run a cold wind was whipping over the dam and so we didn't hang around, but returned quickly to our accommodation to head back out on the bikes, for an 'easy' 36km loop. This loop exposed our camp host's twisted sense of humour when it turned out to include a massive climb to the top of what must be one of the tallest and longest hills in the Harvey region. Painful. Coming back down was a ball though.

All up a good training camp. The session yesterday really laid the base work for an exhausting weekend. Today was really just the icing on the cake.

Did it gain me much? We shall see, there is a certain confidence that you can take from doing a massive ride like yesterday well. Runs in the bank you could say. I just need the running part of the equation to come to the party now.

The other activity of the day was of course keeping track of the big race on the big island, being of course the Ironman World Champs. Certainly some amazing racing, particularly in the women pro race. That one kept us on the edge of our seats. Also a massive congratulations to fellow BYLer Janine Willis who came away with a 3rd place in the 40-44 women. An amazing achievement regardless, but an even bigger one given her very disrupted lead up. Just one of a number of very impressive performances.

Big congratulations to everyone who crossed the lines.