Alex's magnificent adventures and my rest week

Alex

So, apart from the relays, the 2007 World MTBO Championships have been run and won. The best Australian places were taken out by Alex in the Sprint(14), his mate Paul in the Middle distance(18) and Alex again in the long(18). As it should be in a World championships, the times were tight; lose a minute and you lost 6 places. Alex's hope of an individual podium place (top 10 in MTBO champs) was not achieved, but he will be happy with his endeavours as the competition is getting harder and he's improving his results. His sports psychology sessions dealing with focusing were worth the effort and cost, with the splits reflecting that he no longer made a series of major errors..just singletons..sometimes big singletons;he had a very bad day in the middle distance race. Now he can ease off the MTB pressure for a while and look forward to developing his undoubted road time trialling skills. Oh, and earn some $$$ to repay me all those loans.....!!!

Me

What a week! First I discovered that once you have developed one problem, you can become sensitive to other things. My BPPV is an inner ear problem and I also usually wear multifocal glasses. The two do NOT mix well. Despite the fact that I've worn them forever, suddenly they were making me seasick. It took me a couple of days to realise there were 2 problems, but once I changed to single focal length glasses, most of my dizziness slowly vanished.. The BPPV is still there and always will be lurking somewhere, but not the all day dizziness I was experiencing from Friday to Wednesday.

Then some twit in a large Landcruiser with a roo bar on the front failed to stop behind me, causing grievous bodily harm to my tailgate. Actually I wasn't too distressed because I've twice backed into a wall, scratched the bumper with the bikes and had two cars cause damage of a "too small to get it fixed" level..so the end result is a better looking car at no expense to me.

And finally I had news that Jayson Austin has pulled out of making an attempt at the hour record for health reasons. He's had a couple of fairly bad crashes this year and last, plus never really recovered from his successful unofficial attempt. Memo to self...don't plan anything strenuous for a month or so post effort.

And finally, finally I'm going to see the film "T he Flying Scotsman" the Graeme O'Bree story..should be interesting. I read his book; a soul searching tale of a brilliant misfit, jerked around by officialdom. Not a comfortable read.