Weekend Warrior

Ever so briefly I've become a weekend warrior...with just one small ride on Tuesday, so this week...my first week of so-called serious training has been a bit of a non event.

But yesterday with the sun shining and nothing to distract me I was out and about again.

Starting in Croydon and solo I went out towards Yarra Glen intending to do the Tour de Rural Industries again but on the way decided to do a route I've often done the other way round, when you get the most enormous hoon ride down from Skyline road into Yarra Glen. This time I would grovel up the hill.

So that's what I did...as I rode into YG I could see the sun glinting on cars as they crawled up the hill to the north where I was soon to be climbing. Did I falter? nah!

Actually its not all that steep..just a bit long..great views looking south down to the road from which just a while back I'd been looking up!

A good ride and one I'll do again.




Today's ride was to be 60-90 minutes with the middle 45 mins to be ridden at 150-180 watts. The location? Beach road. The famous Beach road where they close the road for 3 hours for triathlons..which is sad when you don't know, as we didn't.

So Lawrence and I rock up to Black Rock and discover that our way is barred. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, we just set off on another road. After about 5 mins I ask ..any idea where this road goes to? Nope! she says.

A bit of creative orienteering and we are heading towards Beach road again trying to see if the road is open at that point. Its not, but I yell at one of the officials.."when's the road going to be opened?" to which he replies.."it'll be open at 1030 Liz" !!!..no idea who it was..but seems he knew me.

So off we ride again staying fairly parallel to Beach road and going away from Black roack...trying to find where the closure ends. The next time we get close we see the triathletes are all running, so we say to the official..can we get on the road now.... no he says, they've got their cycling still to do!..is it a duathlon I ask...no a triathlon he says...rolling our eyes, we give up and cycling further towards town try a third time. This time we're ok to go and have the pleasure of riding on a closed road.

So now we're into the business part of the session and apart from one brief period where I ended up on the bike track (how embarrassing is that) it was hard yakka time with me being the motor of an ever growing pace line. A fair proportion of the time was above 200 watts although the inevitable stopping at lights dropped the avg down. Still, normalised power at 180 and an Intensity factor of >1 is what I was hoping for. Now THAT should make my Performance Management Chart in WKO+ tilt northwards.

Since we were at the beach, the altitude could well be said to be just a tiny bit wrong!

Today's dummy spit was well and truly Lawrence's. One of the members of the pace line showed his total lack of bunch riding skill and manners when, stopping at the lights he cut from by the kerb, across Lawrence's path causing her to have to brake hard and ending up on my right hand side. Guess he couldn't hack being led in a pace line by a pair of females and wanted to get to the front. Anywho..he and L had a yelling match there and then again at the next set of lights where he went to give her a hip and shoulder AFL style charge. Bad bad riding manners and +++++bullying behaviour .

L's motor pace/TT riding has improved out of sight as she was well able to hold my wheel all the way and I only heard a minor wimp from her..she later told me the adrenalin charge from the encounter with Mr Bully helped her over what was about to become a bad patch.

Coffee at Black Road was in the company of Mr and Mrs Trackie MAS9. Mr has been away from the scene for a while due to ill health although apparently he now can be seen trundling up and down Beach road in the company of other equally venerable gents. Mrs Trackie MAS9 is sadly of the opinion that the born again 7 time winner of a certain race has a beautiful body and found the pix in the newspaper to prove it to us. Sadly for her, her salivations fell on deaf ears since neither L or I are a fan.

Rest day tomorrow and skype time with coach , then track on Tues, kettle bells on Wed, Pump and ergo Thurs (have to take Phil to the airport...he's off to Laos) Fri is a rest day and then we start all over again.

One more possible award has come my way, but you only get a chance at The Leader Newspaper Awards if you attend their presentation and I'm not going through that agony again!!! I was nominated as one of their "Superstars" of 2008..but reckon what with the Olympics, I haven't a hope in hell of winning.

Shameless self promotion follows:

Now..you can blame my coach for this next bit of 100% ego polishing, cos she coined the phrase..but if you see SQWC anywhere in future its me...'cos I'm a "Simultaneous Quadruple World Champion"..well until late august anyway!