That title will make sense at the end I promise. Well okay it might not, but it should with the help of Google if it really bugs you.
It seems I may have forgotten a cycling event in yesterday's post. Not only was the Dams rides and the Asthma Foundation Freeway rides on, but the ATTA State 80km TT Championship was on this morning too. Talk about a busy calendar.
The other event that I mentioned yesterday was 70.3 Putrajaya. Looks like all predictions were correct and it was a very tough day out. Hard to know if the conditions were as nasty as predicted, since at this race tough conditions are all relative. Was it just normal tough or harder than normal tough. Without having done this year's race myself it is impossible to know. What I thought was interesting is that for a lot of competitors this year's race actually seemed to be quicker. Freddie Cronenberg, Crowie and Josh Amberger all seemed to have better days out today. In Crowie's case it was 15 minutes better. Most of that 15 minutes was found on the run, which makes me wonder if it perhaps didn't get as hot as they feared. Can you conclude from the results that this year's race turned out to be about the normal level of hardcore, rather than extra tough? Not sure, perhaps, but as I said I am not really willing to make that call without having been there myself. What I can say though is watching today's event made me feel a lot better about my run last year. Last year my race was going along quite nicely until the run. The heat really got to me and my heart rate went through the roof. The last 10km of the run was just survival. In that time I went from 5th to 7th. I have always been a bit annoyed about that fade and wondered what else I could have done. But watching today's results makes me wonder if it is just that sort or race.
Training wise today has been both solid and relaxing. The solid bit came this morning when a bit of a frenetic ride with a couple of guys from Break Your Limits. It hadn't been our intent to have a flat out ride down the freeway, but it more or less evolved (perhaps devolved would be more appropriate) into a Team Time Trial. I have to say it was a lot of fun, and while it was a lot faster than I had planned, the intensity was about where it was supposed to be thanks to the effect of drafting. It makes you realise just how much benefit people are getting when the form up big packs in Triathlons. Truly is a form of cheating. The ride ended up being a bit longer than I had planned, but I really felt good the whole way and so I am not too bothered by the extra distance.
The rest of the day has been a relaxing one just pottering around the house. The Dads and Kids camp from Friday night has meant that the household has been a little shell shocked all weekend. Combined with the fact that we are going away next weekend means that a quiet day today is probably not a bad idea.
With this mornings ride done I have hit the end of my first week of proper training. I have to say I am pretty happy with how it went. I am feeling a lot better than I was expecting to feel and training is going better than I thought it would be. During my time off I was very worried about how long it would take me to recover my swimming, but after this week I am not so worried about that anymore. Sure I am not that fit, but that is easy to fix, the other stuff though, the shoulder, the strength, the water feel, that is nowhere near as bad as I expected. I have swum most of my life and so it has usually felt like second nature, so I wasn't sure how I was going to react to it feeling foreign. Thankfully that hasn't really happened. The running thing will take time. But that is always a work in progress for me, so that is really just the status quo. I can do status quo.
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