Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

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



Thursday 16 April 2009

Post Nats downtime

Long time no write.  Why?..not much happening that's why.

Back at work

4 day break for Easter

Back at work

Actually at this time of the year if you're smart, you can wangle your days off in such  way that for over a month you don't work a full week. And I'm smart!  Although Anzac Day falls at the weekend and so we miss out on it as a public holiday this year, we do have a strange extra day off called "day in lieu of Easter Saturday ".  For some weird reason Easter Saturday has been gazetted as a public holiday and for full time workers you get an extra day off, even if you normally don't work on a Saturday.  Totally incomprehensible, but hey..who's going to argue the toss about an extra paid day off work??!!

Cycling

I'm "going for a ride" rather "training" at present, although there is some structure in the rides in that its not all level 1 tootling around the countryside.

One day over the Easter break I re-did the ride I did in January from home to Yarra Glen and then up the grovel to Watson's Creek, Kangaroo Ground, Warrandyte and home again.  I expected to see many, many signs of the bush fires, but no, this area was untouched.  The blackened paddock I saw a month ago on the way in to Yarra Glen was all green again courtesy of recent rains and only a few dead exotic trees and the new growth all up the trunks and branches of the Eucalypts gave a hint of Black Saturday.

The Track Nats were good fun but as usual there were problems with low numbers effecting all classes but especially the older classes (women as usual worse off).  We clearly have to do something in order to make the competitions more attractive and maybe one of the lessons is to keep the championships where the bulk of the track riders live ie Sydney or Melbourne.  I guess having the champs in Tas meant that only those who felt they could medal chose to enter.

One lesson I learned over in Tas, although I didn't realise it til I got home is to do with contact lenses.  Due to an oversight earlier in the year I ended up opening 2 lots of contact lenses and so have 2 little containers to chose from when deciding to wear them.  On the last day of the comp I used one set but took the other container with me and so had to put 2 lenses into each little fluid filled side of the container.  And then forgot to do anything about it.  A week later I'm about to go out for a ride and don't want to use my groovy modern prescription glasses..I want to use my even groovier BBB World Champion striped sunnies and so need the contacts.  Alas..I didn't have 4 lenses any more..I had 2 lots of lenses welded intimately and permanently together.  Which reminds me I'd better get some more or I'll be racing the Omnium with a white stick in one hand.

2 comments:

Judith said...

Do you wear disposable lenses.? They are fantastic if you dont. and cheaper and you can have a few spare pairs around all of the time......

Liz said...

yup..the problem was that I was down to my last 2 pairs and they sorta got welded together. However all is ok..I got some more VERY quickly..actually much more quickly than I'd expected, especially as my left one is multifocal..great service.