Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

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



Wednesday 27 May 2009

Irritable blog post

Did I say rest and recovery in my last post? silly me.

The training aspect was definitely restful in that I was barely on the bike at all, but recovery did not spill into my work hours as total chaos reigns and the problem with my laptop is not resolving so it looks like I'll be forking out $$$$ to get a new laptop. Getting it to the Fujitsu people for them just to have a look was going to cost me close to $200. The incompatibility/difficulties that Training Peaks and TACX software has with Vista means I have to go second hand again in order to get XP.

I raced a 21km TT on Sunday but was not on song and in fact did it 90s slower than in July last year..the difference between coming off 2 weeks of virtually no training and the last race before going OS to compete in the road worlds. I was good downhill and on the flats but sucked big time going uphill. I wasn't last though...I was 2nd last! My club continues to assume women want to race only 10km TT's and I had to be proactive in requesting/demanding I rode the full 2 laps only to be told in a mincey voice..oh, well then you'll have to ride B grade. Sadly although there were close to 100 competitors there were no prizes for women.

Easing back into serious type training then and I think I'm going to have to re-engage with M. Lash. The TACX fortius helps me get to the end of a session but only if I use it on the virtual reality or real life video...set my self up an interval program and I'm off the bike waaaay before it's completed.......bored silly. I think I'm an MTB'er at heart.

Total chaos at work? Yup, double yup! No phone, 1 computer linked to the network and loud noises from behind a black plastic screen...yup total chaos. By early pm yesterday I was soooooo irritable I felt like walking off the job. We had >30 missed calls on the phone (it had gone mute so we didn't know when it was ringing), ALL the Physios needed to use MY computer as its was the only one working, and I couldn't hear myself think let alone instruct my patients! Finally IT got off their collective butts to help us..we have no IT person permanently at our campus now so whenever it actaully needs a person rather than disembodied help via the network, we have to wait and wait.

This Sunday is the first of the Masters TT series held in the north east of the State at Wangaratta. There's a good sized field, although only 8 women. I'll be going up the day before in an effort to prevent total exhaustion from ~6 hours driving (3 each way) plus the race. Finding a place to stay was difficult..dunno what else is going on there that weekend but there wasn't a bed available in Wang itself, nor Benalla nor Chiltern etc etc. I ended up getting a bed in Euroa, which will lessen the journey by a bit....I hope to get accomm in Wang itself for the rest of the series.

Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger...? right?

2 comments:

Judith said...

Good luck on the weekend - Wangaratta is a long way to travel for a time trial and since I am only just back on the bike, we have decided to give it a miss. We have a Three Day Tour on the long weekend in June locally so that is my return to racing. What was the time trial you just did and who are these women that only want 10km time trials - are they serious???? 10kms is barely a warm up

Liz said...

hi!..the race was at the Boulevard and it's not that the women necessarily *wanted* to ride just 10km, its just assumed .. sorta the default distance.

And I agree..10km..why bother..