tour de bayside burbs

This week has been a "tired" week..too much hard training, hard work at the salt mine and too many days getting up at 4am. This being so, I didn't get to Thursday motorpacing.actually I couldn't have no matter how I felt as there were 4 admissions to the ward with me and a new grad to do the work...so that was Thursday..too tired once I finally got home. Friday was a similar scenario and so no cycling after Tuesday's max power efforts on the track.

Tuesday is one of the regular 4 am days..getting up then allows me to get the track by 6am..pack in 90 mins hard training before dashing off to work...the days are shortening though and so now not only am I the sole rider on the track, but I also look REALLY weird with my helmet light from MTB days the only method of seeing my way round....I could put the lights on but that costs extra....



By Saturday I was feeling fresher but not able to do the motorpacing with Alex I was s'posed to. Instead I planned for a cruisy long ride along through the bayside suburbs..the idea being to get to Arthurs Seat..a hill climb with more than 1 elbow to it. Aus is the flattest continent and we struggle to find hills that are any where near as feral as in Europe..both in steepness and length.

I started off with high hopes, knowing that I needed to get to Dromana..however the road signs are all geared for cars and so when I hit the freeway, I realised that I'd have to do some creative navigation, which actually was not too hard, but time was not on my side and unless I wanted to stay on the bike for 4-5 hours, Arthurs seat would have to wait for another day. As it was my ride was for 3.5 hours and was 103km long...enough already! The lights started flickering close to where it says Braeside on the map, briefly went out up a hill there and then flicked back on when I could see I was very close to Black Rock where my car and recovery drink were waiting for me. So despite a stuttering week of training, the blue line continues upwards, although I'm not sure how long this will go on for as in March I have a student plus am leading a project at work, plus the usual clinical load........


While the lights were still on I passed a sign which, as near as I can remember said:

"This church is not full of hypocrites.
There's always room for more."

that kept me sniggering for a l-o-o-o-n-g while.