Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

"With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable"



Saturday 25 August 2007

And finally...the first 25 min test

With more downhill swoops on my fitness graph than the recent stock market indicators, finally this coming up week sees the first of my 25 min tests. Given my currently appalling recovery capability, the approach is going to be a slow one ie this time I will be going at what ever speed 160 watts gives me, check out what that gives me, how I feel then try again a bit later..the following week perhaps.

Work continues to be extremely busy..this Friday I was part of an interviewing panel from 9-2pm NON STOP. I was wrecked afterwards. Totally irritable and quite dizzy..although why dizzy is a bit of an interesting result...must google "dizzy" and find out all the reasons..see if interviewing for 5 hrs is a common theme!!!!! My stint as Acting Manager is coming to a close. The power to alter things that have been a problem for a long time has been very satisfying, so I've had all the fun and none of the overall heavy burden of responsibility.

On the bike side Alex has returned from Europe and the pair of us are enjoying planning next year's trip. His World Champs are in Poland during the same week that the World Masters Road champs are on( I have my eye on bettering my PB for the TT). We envisage going over early, spending time on road/MTB (me/him) bikes then separating to go to our various events. I rather fancy visiting Czech republic and Austria...July/August is a very touristy month, so perhaps not France, although I'd like to ride Galibier and Mont Ventoux before age and decrepitude put it out of the question.

In the meantime a bit of retail therapy is called for: we both plan on buying the Ride Blue.com TT bikes later this year but right now I'm spending my hard earned bikkies on a Zipp double wheel bag..the oval one. I can't imagine why all double wheel bags aren't oval, since with the round ones, the axles abut each other and end up being hard to zip closed. Gipiemme used to make one too, but I haven't managed to find where to get one

I also need to buy a set of these babies to provide a more aero aspect to my Corima 4 spoke front wheel. I've had the wheel for years and years and only just discovered (was shown) that it can accept a threaded thingey in stead of a skewer! Hmm.

And finally, with regard to the way the Masters aspect of the sport is administered in this country..it leaves me tearing my hair out. The rules say our toad TT's should be 20km...the State TT this year is 11.4km...two laps would be fine, but of course there'd be confusion (quote) if we all were to ride 2 laps. The solution is simple and is done every time that there is a TT around the rowing course at Penrith, NSW ..you send the athletes off a 30 second intervals in groups of say 20 with a gap to allow most if not all to finish before te next lot start so there is no overlap....sigh.

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