Smelling Roses

A nice it of gentle spinning today. A reasonable bit of distance, but very low intensity, so it still felt a lot like recovery.

This morning I headed out with some of the junior squad from Break Your Limits. The bulk of the squad is over at the Australia Junior Triathlon Series on the Gold Coast with coach Steve Gleeson. With no coach to take them around today, the club's vice president, myself and a few of the other senior members headed around the river with them for a pleasant morning on the bike

Strange sort of morning on the bike. It wasn't exactly great conditions with an absolute howling easterly wind, but despite that there were heaps of people out on bikes. I guess besides the wind it was quite a lovely morning. Perhaps it isn't that surprising there were so many people wanting to be out and about, the weather, combined with this being a relaxing time of year for most people, means it was a nice morning for it. Still it is always very impressive to see just how many cyclists there are in town.

Being a lower intensity session it was also a good chance to get out and smell the roses. It is funny, I don't know how many times I have ridden around the river but on this ride I seemed to notice things I haven't before. Like this tree for instance.

I don't know how many times I have stood below this tree waiting for the lights to change, but I have never really noticed it before. It is quite an impressive tree really. I had a bit of a 'aren't we lucky to be doing this' moment standing there this morning looking up at the glorious blue sky and the tree's impressive spreading limbs. It was one of those sessions, enjoying being out riding for no other reason than the simple pleasure of it.

I guess really that is what a recovery period is all about. I really enjoy training, perhaps even more than I enjoy racing, but it does tend to be an activity that has a narrow focus, to get full value out of the sessions it sort of has too. That is what makes it so nice to get out and just cruise around for a while. Relax a little and rsemind yourself what it is that you enjoy about this sport so much, before diving headlong back into the endless roundabout that is Ironman training.