Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

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



Sunday 16 September 2007

Speed training and crewing for Ben

Today's training was for "speed". I had to do 6 x 2 minutes at speed which I chose to do with 15 minute recoveries along Beach Road during a 90 minute ride.

Beach Road is slightly undulating and windy...as a result of both those facts, I'm going to have to label my graph to indicate which were my efforts..since some of them were slower than my recovery times...ie some of the recoveries involved hooning downhill quite fast but with little effort.

After my training I drove across town to crew for Ben, my younger son, who was competing solo in the Subaru 12 hour MTB enduro race. Ben had been given the No.1 plate and so was feeling the pressure a bit. I arrived about half way through the race to discover that he was in the lead. My first check on the stopwatch indicated he had a 6 minute lead, the next lap it became an 8 minute lead then 7 minutes. Since the laps were figures of 8 with the cross over just in front of us we were able to keep him up to date when he came back into the feed zone. During one of the early laps in the dark, the guy chasing him broke and Ben suddenly had a 20 minute lead and so for the last few laps all he had to do was stay upright. He was riding really well and confidently and we knew he'd win; he finally realised it when he lapped the guy who was in 3rd place.

So after a bundle of podium places Ben got his first enduro win and came away with a trophy, a nice sized cheque and a bundle of schwag, plus numb feet, helmet hair, a sore butt, stiff joints and a really weird way of walking.

Well done Ben from a somewhat biased but very proud Mum.

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