TRAINER ROAD
Maybe we are a bit late to the party since I discovered it has actually been around for a few years but Jared decided to try it out a few weeks ago in order to try and find some motivation for riding over winter. I/we have never been big on wind training, I gave it a good 6 week effort leading up to Kona when I was broken and I was quite good at hitting the power targets but I would dread it all day knowing what was coming after work. It didn't help that we had a terrible setup for it in out tiny little house and would be a PITA to set up and take down and we would practically be touching when we were on the bikes.
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| So spacious |
I find Trainer Road way more motivating for some reason being able to see your power on the the bigger screen and trying to get a high accuracy percentage at the end of each segment. Only problem so far is that we only have one subscription and one ANT+ stick so Jared usually gets to use it since he was the one who initiated it all (and he is even worse at windtraining than me so probably wouldn't bother if it's not on the screen in front of him) so we are currently working through that.
MOUNT JOGGERS HALF MARATHON
We had a little weekend away to stay with our Lawson friends to run the same Half Marathon that we did last year at Queen's Birthday. Last year I was coming off IMNZ so hadn't done much in March and April and only a handful of runs over 60mins. I wanted to run under 95mins but thought that might be a bit difficult. I ran 93mins in one of the best paced and effortless half marathons I had ever done. So naturally this year with far more running under my belt I of course wanted to go faster and hopefully break 90 minutes for the first time since about 2010.
I tend to find when I have any type of goal or expectation on myself that's when things go to poo and this was no exception. Actually I wouldn't say it went to poo but I ended up running only about one minute faster than last year but it required a lot of effort and my legs hurt for about 3 days afterwards. And my pacing was pretty shit.
Funny that I ran my best ever half marathon (in 2009 but I still try to cling to the past) with no Garmin or GPS and no time goal or pace goal, just ran to what my leggies wanted to do and wasn't even sore at the end *sigh*. Maybe I should do a half one day without a Garmin and see what happens.
Anyhoo we had a great weekend with lot of spa time, dog time and baby time and gossip and food.
2-UP TIME TRIAL
The last time I did this race was a couple of years ago when my partner pulled out on me at the eleventh hour so I called upon Uncle Roy step in. The general idea is that you are evenly matched so that you can each share the front, obviously this wasn't going to happen with Roy so I just hang on behind him yelling out "EASE!" every now and then.
I find it hard to find a partner because ideally it needs to be someone about the same size as me otherwise there is not much point in me going to the front because they won't get any draft.
So I was just going to be spectating until our ninja friend Dr Dildo the Dentist said I should go with his 15 year old son Lachie and being the Tiger Dad that he is he told Lachie it was happening. It was a bit long for him as school TT's are only 16km in a 4 or 5 person team so I don't think he enjoyed it much after about 12.5km but I just took the lead for most of it and had a short rest every 5 minutes or so.
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| I look like a real cyclist. I think so anyway. |
I got to wear my BMW skinsuit which I don't have much call for and wore my Zipp's on my road bike which was pretty exciting.
HOLIDAY
We went on an actual holiday - no bikes, no race, no training camp - WOW. Travelling without a bike was awesome. We just went to the Gold Coast so went to a whole heap of fun places like Dreamworld, Movieworld and Seaworld, we went for a couple of little trots on the beach and ate lots of shit.
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| Nice view for lunch |
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| I found a panorama setting |
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| Yes we are in Australia |
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| Fudge anyone? |
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| Dolphins |
Jared got sick the day before we left so was a bit sad for a first couple of days and then lovingly passed it on to me on the second to last day and we are now back and I have lots of green stuff coming out of my nose and chest. I actually don't feel too bad despite that but have not done much for the last couple of days.
We have signed up and booked flights for the Samoa Half Ironman race in August so the idea was to go on holiday and then it is a 8 week block until Samoa where we get fit and have no excuses so hopefully I am right in the next couple of days because I am sure that will creep around pretty fast
Oh and another piece of rather momentous news (in my world anyway) - after ~18 years of being a non red meat eater I have decided I am sick of relying of iron pills to give me iron (I invariably get sick of taking them and periodically end up horribly iron deficient which is what has happened recently) and I have started to attempt to eat red meat. So far this has consisted of little tidbits usually off Jared's meals which normally take a couple of minutes of me psyching myself up to get it into my mouth.
Mainly the reason why gave up red meat was because I didn't actually like most of it so I certainly can't see myself knocking back a giant steak or rack of ribs but if I can have the occasional lamb or mince dish hopefully it will make me a healthier person.
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| Obligatory PC shot |
