Oh dear my weekly standard has slipped already... Mostly due to a small mishap on the bike last week which left me in an un-blogging frame of mind, but more about that later.
SWIM
Got up to 6km in my weekly long swim woop woop! Had a catch up with swim manager Haydn who said I need to build up to 7km once every 3 weeks - schnitzel von crumm that is a long way... If I get in before squad and do 600-800m then do squad of about 3.5km then I just need to do another ~2.5km afterwards, easy?! Its an easier way of doing it than doing 7km myself at least but I'll still knock out a solo 6km every 3 weeks to keep me focussed. I have been adding a little bit of fly to my shorter swims - 6 x 25m - to get me stronger and the other day I managed a whole 50m of fly - OMG! I was pooped and am not sure if we could still call it fly but I'm sure it all helps.
BIKE
Last week was version two of the
Race of Six Friends and I volunteered myself to be in the B team because I thought my legs would be a bit munted from the Legend Marathon - as it turns out I had nothing to worry about... The course was out South and the weather forecast wasn't great which was disappointing. Our team started out with high hopes of the weather clearing and a better team of navigators than last time.
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| Jared Razzle's shock as he sees the course profile involving a very very large hill |
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| Oh so happy and oblivious to what will happen in the next 5mins |
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| Still with all my skin |
As we approached the first turn which was 2km from the start, JT (who was riding in front of me in 3rd wheel) all of a sudden came crashing to the ground with no apparent reason, I thought "oh that's a shame but I can go round him" and next thing my front wheel gave way from underneath me and I went skidding face first into him and the two behind me came and joined us in our pile up. We still can't work out what happened other than something like diesel on the wet road, but all the other teams went that way without any problems so it was a bit odd.
Anyways after sitting on the ground for a moment and regrouping ourselves we eventually headed on with me and Gerry being the most badly damaged. I had a bleeding and fat top lip and ouchies on my elbow, knee and both hips. The thought of riding another 128km wasn't a very happy one. After about 15mins it became clear that things were not all well with Gerry and once our saviours Neilio and Paulio came past us in their cars we flagged them down and Gerry called it a day, turns out he had a fractured rib. I was feeling pretty beaten up but decided to carry on for a bit even though our time wouldn't count anymore with only 5 riders, but after standing around for 5mins and getting a bit cold and then starting to ride again my knee was super sore so I took the opportunity to flag Neilio down and ended my ride.
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| Not too duck-like yet |
After seeing the rest of the course from the car I can safely say that the day would never have gone well for me even if we hadn't have crashed, there was a 15km gravel road which has the gnarliest up and downhills - max of 15% gradient in several spots and 3 out of my 4 remaining teammates had to walk. The downhill looked awful - thick gravel and steep little descents, it wasn't really suitable for roadbikes and I think it would have been terrifying for me. Plus the rain meant a lot of cold shivering people waiting for punctured teammates - all very Jo unfriendly.
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| Excuse me but are you walking?! |
Both our teams didn't complete the course due to mechanicals and our crash, the roads were pretty slippery and dangerous and our friends in the Hot Cycles team had a nasty crash on a downhill which resulted in 4 of them being taken to hospital.
Not really a day to remember.
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| The beginning of the end |
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| Grumpy much? Where are your teammates Jared?!! |
RUN
Oh and another sad story...
I haven't attempted to run since my pre-Legend jaunt, shin is feeling much better but still not good enough to hop on which is my criteria for running. I went and saw one of my sports physicians who really put the hard word on me, he reckoned I am too skinny and I need to put on some weight to make my bones stronger which is why I am getting injured so much. The term
Female Athlete Triad was bandied about a bit and is something that I learned about at uni but never thought it applied to me. I certainly wouldn't say I have an eating disorder (first step of the triad) - and anyone who knows me would know that I never go without food - but I do have a few issues with eating bad foods and am pretty au fait with the fat and kJ content of most foods that I eat.
I conducted a short study of BMI's of some of the top female triathlete who are little (ie. Emma Snowsill, Andrea Hewitt, Mirinda Carfrae, etc) and my BMI was way lower than any of theirs. I know that BMI is not really considered an accurate way of assessing body composition but I think in similar populations it would be relevant.
I have had so many injuries these last couple of years despite not doing huge volumes of running and have done everything I know of to prevent further injury so now putting on some weight really seems to be my last option, even though it leaves me feeling quite panicky that I might turn into a fatty fatty boom boom. The thought of jumping on the scales and seeing 43kg or even 45kg stresses me out but I am coming to terms with it. I have got a plan involving starting some weights and upping my protein intake to put on a couple of kgs of muscle and a teeny bit of fat.
In the meantime its back to the pool running and using the elliptical trainer at my new gym in lieu of running.
*sigh*
