Whoops!

Me to Ben  last night via SMS  " Hope you had a good recovery day"

Ben to me..instant response(!)...."It was an 80 km race today"

Me..."whoops! got that one wrong!..how did you go?"

Him....... 6th

Me...brilliant, proud of you!

So Ben and Ryan came 6th and 7th on the day, are lying 6th and 8th overall and are leading the pairs competition by about an hour.

Ben and Ryan are "Team ayup", but I was very disappointed that the ay-up facebook page was only mentioning their solo rider's successes, so I did the interfering mother thing and posted a msg asking them why no mention!!! 

For the non cyclist "ayup: are lights for cyclists ...both road and MTB and are very very good.  In fact, I'm borrowing a set of Ben's light for Italy; my eyes take an age to change over when moving from sunshine to dark...even in that small tunnel on the bike path near Bourke Road and some of those tunnels through the mountains are very long and full of cars etc. Last year someone came off and broke bones when they disappeared into a small pothole, a fate I don't fancy happening to me.

The bike is developing cobwebs but I've promised it an outing tomorrow afternoon.  Today I'm off up into the country to pick up some equipment and tomorrow morning I'm fundraising for the Oncology Children's Foundation.   

The ocf fund research in"pursuit of a cure" for cancer in children and as a participant in the the Italy tour  I'm asked to fund raise  for them.   If you feel you'd like to support them and don't get to see me in person please visit my "hero" page   

Ben's excellent adventures

This is the profile for the race Ben's currently riding and they're  just about mid way.  Ben clearly has a liking for the number 7 or perhaps 8 since not only in this race, but also in Wildside a while ago that's where he seemed to end up on the day.  For this race he's been 7th for 3 stages and 8th  for 1 stage and is currently sitting in 6th overall  with he and Ryan  leading the pairs competition by about 30 minutes.

Me? well I'm still to get back on the bike.  I had planned on riding a bit on  Tues, or Wed or today or tomorrow, but in actual fact haven't and wont until  Saturday afternoon.  Well, maybe its for the best , I do tend to overcook myself.

Ben's racing the Mountains to Beach

Ben is currently flying the Randall cycling flag in an MTB stage race taking place in NSW...the DT Swiss  Mountains to Beach race.  He's paired up the his mate Ryan and they're racing in Ay Up colours (I think).  today's race is the "Ay Up Dawn Raid" so they're racing in the dark finishing at sun-rise followed by a cruise to the next accomodation and the rest of the day is for R&R.  I sure hope this elevation chart is an exaggeration of the truth!

Currently he and Ryan are leading the pairs classification and he's sitting in 7th over all.

Morituri te salutant

....well metaphorically dead  not actually! so eat drink and be merry for this evening I suffer.  There... I've managed to get 2 cliched statements  into 1 sentence.

Huge thanks to all of you who have sent me messages of good luck and support.   Sadly quite a few have said they can't make it to the velodrome on the night, so those of you who are going to be there need to be of good voice!   If there aren't very many people there to provide crowd noises I might have to crank up the music to an even higher decibel level and  I've asked Alex to add another job to his list...that of being in the stands yelling loudly.

So now I've stopped counting down the days as there are just 11 hours til the sufferfest I've managed  to sign up for yet again. Please can you all stop me in my tracks next time I start talking about a 3rd attempt?  Please?!  

Actually the experience I gained from the first attempt has been of great benefit and has allowed me to avoid some of the organisational pitfalls plus a deeper understanding about what I can and can't do and how I need  my concentration to be 100% and how it is is adversely effected by my handlers talking to me.  Actually, I think I always knew that since I seem to go deaf when doing TT training efforts and have frequently found myself slowing down while trying to work out what exactly  had just been yelled to me....

New count down: I have 34 more days of fronting up at work.

An invitation for March 1st

to support me in my Hour Record attempt and  I say "attempt" deliberately because with the incredibly uncomfortable/inclement weather we've been having recently my training has gone off the rails more than somewhat (its been either wet and windy, windy or very humid and hot).  

The attempt will take place at DISC 5.30pm (1730) on Monday March 1st. and I'd love to have people come along and give me support since, if my recent trial is any indication, I'll need heaps of verballing  vocal support of a raucous nature to get me over the line. The licensed caff will be open for drinks and snacks.

I'm really keen to get this in the bag as I'm also going to try for a World Best Time(Record) in the 500m TT at the Nats in April, which would make a rather unusual double.  Unless someone has again sneaked in while I wasn't looking, I should be creating the WMA8 (women 65-69 year old) record for the hour, but there is a time for me to beat in the 500m TT.

Counting the days

Not that I'm counting of course...much!

However this is where I'm at currently.....

I have 23 days  til I make an attempt to create a World Hour Record for WMAS 8 (ie women 65-69 years old)

I have 53 days  to front up for work before I cease permanent part time work permanently

I have 90 days until l I fly out  to take part in the 35 day tour of Italy riding from Palermo to Como


in there somewhere but currently not being counted are the State and National Masters Track Champs  (March and April respectively) where I'm going for a World Record in the 500m TT. I managed to break it in an earlier event but it couldn't be ratified as there was no drug testing/not enough officials and a few other things that made it ineligible.


The hour and the 500m records make  for an interesting bookending of effort do they not.

Bonding in the face of aversity

Over my competitive life (100 years and counting) the days I recall most vividly are those when merely to survive was a major achievement.... for example at an orienteering event near Daylesford about 30 years ago.Alex and I left Melbourne in sunshine and appropriate clothing and ended up competing in a howling blizzard with creek crossings roped and manned. After I'd survived my course without succumbing to hypothermia, I took 7 yr old Alex round his course and had to ford those same creeks with him on my back.

There are quite a few such days in my memory..some commemorated by T shirts telling the world "I survived.......". Those of us who were there recall them in vivid detail and still reminisce about them.

Actually looking back at that particular event we were more than a bit gung ho and I wonder why on earth I risked taking Alex out in such conditions.... "risk management" wasn't a phrase we knew back then...

This weekend's country track champs sounds as though it fits into this category.. not dangerous maybe but definitely memorable. So while metro club members were swanning around indoors on the boards, the country club members were fighting the elements and yes we're all glad to have the rain, but maybe not just then and not just there. Facebook is already overflowing with pix and comments and there's no doubt that those select few involved will be recalling the details for years to come.

New bikes-track and road
Damn! I wish I'd not forgotten to grow. With Welsh and Scottish ancestors, plus a post war diet, I ceased growing at just under 5 foot 4 inches and of course have now shrunk some.

This is a major problem when getting a bicycle to fit and is one of the reasons I didn't get into racing earlier in my life...bikes in the 80 and 90's just didn't fit..too long in the top tube. Even now with the so called "women's fit" range the only solution for me to have a high end bike that actually fits me is to go custom made. Expensive? yes..especially if you go to one of the best builders..Baum but there is another problem - I'm not the only person going custom made and the wait is up to 3 months. It will be worth the wait, but the agony of waiting.....can I do this?.....yes I can....I have patience.....

Another weekend, another race

This weekend its the Metro champs...country champs too but my club is a metro one, so we get to race indoors.. country champs are outdoors and the weather is a bit damp.

I entered the TT only as I have a mind to get a World Best Time/World Record..the one I ended up 6/100's of a second shy of at the Worlds.

I also wanted to explore the theory that a smaller chain ring gets you up to speed quicker than a bigger one. My normal gear for the 500m TT is 51/15 ie 91.8 gear inch, for the TT at the Omnium last week I tried 44/13 ie 91.4 gear inch and today I tried 48/14 which is 92.6.

My usual 1st lap is 25 seconds...today it was 24.8s and with a final time of 43.677s my second lap was 18.877s. I felt absolutely shot at the end and thought I'd done a 45 (I find reading with contacts in a bit difficult!) so went back to my rollers thinking WTF...I'm going backwards. Then someone came up and congratulated me and I discovered I'd won and done a good time! Sorta stopped feeling PO after that.

Soooo...I done good, although since there weren't enough time keepers and no drug testing it's unofficial, so just gotta do it again later on in the season.

My reward...a handful of choc covered peanuts and a beer...not at the same time though!

Womens Omnium-done and dusted and a new goal or two.

47 exhausted women competitors struggled out of DISC late yesterday after a day's racing which had started about 7 hours before.

The Omnium is cycling answer to the Pentathlon in Athletics. We race a flying 200, Scratch, Pursuit, Points and 500m TT all in one day, the middle 3 races in the list all being shorter than usual. With 47 riders there was never any problem with the rule stating you must have 30 minutes between races.

Melbourne is famous for often providing 4 seasons in one day, but yesterday it contented itself with just 1...pouring rain, for which we are truly grateful, especially if it also fell over the reservoir catchment areas. However, although initially I thought..good I'm scheduled to ride indoors today, I'd totally forgotten about DISC's roof....AKA sieve.

Scheduled to start at 1100, that time came and went and we'd not even been allowed to get on the track to warm up as there were wet areas all over the place. Eventually, with regular dabbing with towels by a bevy of helpers we started the competition off with the Pursuit...at least the low down wet areas could be easily dealt with, there was one rather large puddle low down on the back straight which meant the start gates were placed higher up than usual. The dabbing kept on during the entire day, but once the pursuit was completed the "dabbers" had it under control and the rest of the competition flowed on.

As for my racing...there were 8 masters riders entered and after a quick look at the list of riders, which comprised 30-44 year olds, my goal became..see if you can avoid being lapped in the mass start races, and try out different gears in the others. And that's what I did.

So using 48/14 for every race except the TT...
I rode a simple appalling Pursuit ...I dunno, I've lost the plot on how to ride this race,
an OK flying 200m...def not my race...I keep having to ask how many laps I'm s'posed to ride!
I was lapped only in the final sprint to the line in both the points and scratch races
and finally after a day long "warm up" and riding 44/13 was only .2 sec slower than at the Worlds in the 500m TT.

So, having buried my watch somewhere or other at the start of the day, I dragged my sorry butt home to find Phil had already had his meal and that it was after 7pm. The car remained packed and since I haven't yet found my watch I still didn't know what time it was when I staggered downstairs this morning!

This week's training continues as before..endurance stuff, peppered with 2 gym sessions and T'ai chi and for next weekend another trial of 44/13 in the 500m TT as I've entered the Vic Metros Champs. Since I'm going to be racing for less than a minute(!) I must organise myself even more thoroughly...3 trips into the velodrome for a day's racing is ok..3 trips for 44 seconds is not ok.

New Goals

I'm a goal orientated person so when I find something to challenge myself I'm a very happy camper and yesterday I found 2 new goals, one doable, one...probably not!

I decided to do all my warming up on rollers rather my usual ergo trainer..the reason being that with the ergo I have a tendency to stay on it too long. So there I was warming up on rollers when who should park herself in front of me but Helen Kelly, fresh from the World Cup and who I know would be an ace on the rollers. Time to look and learn Liz!

So look and learn I did and as a result here are my new goals on the rollers:
Numero uno: to be able to stand up and do efforts.
Numero duo: to be able to take off a shirt while happily pedalling (and staying upright).

The first one I will be able to manage, the second one........nah!..worth a try though?

So to deconstruct the challenges of the second goal..firstly smooth pedalling cos no hands (natch)...impeccable core strength to maintain balance while dealing with the added external perturbation of getting out of the shirt plus also the momentary loss of visual input.

Hmm...I think I'll start testing for this one by pedalling no hands with eyes closed briefly, then add waving hands around to mimic the shirt off bit.......if I can get that far and not break bones, then I'll go for broke (pun intended).

And finally next Monday Phil and I will be celebrating our ruby wedding anniversary...40 years!!

Word Masters Pursuit

Early on in the year I told my coach that I really wanted to get the World Masters Pursuit title as it had eluded me while in Manchester and for a variety of reasons I'd not raced it the previous 2 years. It was a gap in my palmares I wanted to plug.

I had sort of forgotten that conversation, but she hadn't so, when about 2 months ago I was struggling to do any training at all and was bleating that maybe I'd not race it , I was totally ignored. Wise coach!

There are so few old ladies still racing track that the beauty of the timed events is that the place on the podium (or not) is only one factor we look at, the other is our time ie we keep an eye on how our times are dropping as we age.

My very best pursuit is 2min 49 point something, but nowadays I'm in the 3 minute zone. I had hoped to set a World Best Time for the pursuit but for some reason, although she raced it in Colorado Springs in August, Marsha Macro's time of 2 min 52.7 seconds wasn't listed as a record. With this in mind and not wanting to claim for a record that was somewhat slower than one that might be in the pipeline (plus all the kerfuffle that goes with it..ie drug testing), and since I'd been fairly close to doing that in the Qual round, I decided to try and catch my oppponent rather than go for steady lapping.

Baaaaaad move! I blasted out of the gate..25 second first lap (same as my best ever first lap)..stewpid stewpid 19s second lap then 20 then 21 then 22 then died, fried and blurred final 4 laps with my coach's husband asking later how on earth had I managed to free wheel on a fixed hub..rude bugger(!). Hey I was riding with legs that wouldn't bend that suddenly weighed >3 times their usual, with lungs and heart protesting and with tunnel vision. I kept going ovally but only from instinct. I was TOAST! Time slower than the qual round, but first across the line.

However mission accomplished and with more races to come this season, time to get into the high 2 min zone again.

Scratch today and tomorrow I enter the twilight zone ie its my 65th birthday!

World Masters Track Champs-TT

Well I won but sadly missed the World Best time by 6/100 second..which is held by Marsha Macro, an old foe from Manchester pursuiting days. Her time was done at altitude.

With our season just starting, I have a few more time to go for it.

Pursuit tomorrow

RR

60km race.
Probs with tyres losing air and rattly clusters before the race..so had to use training wheels
Weather was windy as.
And now I'm wasted.
Dropped on steep hills and then TT'd back.
Faded at the very last hill.
Tired.
Dehydrated.
Heavy legs.
Realised that the World Masters Road Champs are on this week...sob....I should be there...!

Driving home I saw Alex's car parked by the side of the highway...he was fast asleep (powernap not Nanna nap !)..he'd just done 5 hours of a 6 hour enduro. So another Randall wasted!

Need food
Need rest.
Roll on part time.
Roll on no distractions so I don't forget pumps and HRM's when going to a race!
Oh and must check which powerbar gel I had...it was DISGUSTING!

TT race

Everyone has to have a bad day..a "jour sans". I had one yesterday.

The ride out and part way back was fine, but then I fell into a black hole; I lost concentration and slowed. Somewhat later ??how much later? I realised that I wasn't breathing heavily..ie wasn't at threshold.

I haven't looked at the power read out, but I think I was 1-2 minutes slower than the last time I raced the course. Disappointing.

Alex came up late in the day and we went out for a meal...and got forgotten...luckily, when it finally arrived it was tasty and like all pub meals the serves were extremely generous.

Road race today..60km and the weather doesn't look too bad..6-16 degrees and no mention of rain.

and we're racing again

This weekend sees me racing again. I don't think I've raced so much since I started being coached and was told not to race so regularly 'cos the resultant fatigue got in the way of a structured training plan. The reason I'm racing so much this year is that FINALLY there are enough road TT's in the State to make me want to race.

So this weekend I'm back up to Castlemaine to ride the penultimate race of the Masters TT Series on Saturday and the State Masters Road Champs on Sunday; the weather is apparently going to be a "iffy". I always struggle to travel light, but this time I've gone overboard, packing for absolutely every weather possibility except hot. I just hope its not too windy.

The TT is over the course I rode a couple of weeks ago and which also forms the early part of the 30km road circuit - I have to go round twice. As usual there are few older women entered in the road race...did I say a few...actually I mean 2! We start with the 50 yr olds who will no doubt spit me out the back over the first hill, as I'm not climbing well at the moment, and then I'll be solo TT'ing the final 50km. I may have company of course - depends on how Shirley is climbing.

Alex will join me in my cabin on Saturday night as he has entered a 6hr enduro MTB race being held somewhere in the area on Sunday. Meanwhile, Ben is off up to NSW to race the "3 ring circus", riding for AyUp and Phil has returned from Alaska, and San Francisco looking extremely tanned but with a thumb that doesn't look too good, its still very inflamed....a visit to the surgeon is planned for today. Looking at the pix of Ben in the link above, for the first time I am struck by the resemblance to my father and brother...apart from the side burns(!)

My training has been going well this week and I've also managed to shed a bit of excess blubber. The stress of making a life changing decision is behind me and I'm much more relaxed and able to focus as a result. The ad for my old job hit the website the day after my last post; news travels fast and I have been approached by many people from all parts of my campus and the easternhealth network commenting/congratulating/teasing me.

Now we wait to see if anyone is interested in applying for it.

Aftermath

Bridge to engine room....
Bridge to engine room....

Yoo! hoo! anyone there?

Bridge to engine room....

Where the f*%k are you?

A weekend's torture - self inflicted

2 TT's, 7 hours driving, 1 sore finger, 1 contact lens lost somewhere under my eyelid, 1 motel room next door to a restaurant hosting a wedding=1 very tired Liz. So tired that my drive home had to be punctuated by 2 stops for a caffeine infusion and 1 powernap.

But it was worth it. My weekend started on Thursday evening when I gathered everything together, packing the car before work on Friday in order to have a fast get away from work 1 minute after 5. First stop a 2-3hr drive away was Castlemaine..it being Friday evening I was looking to the 3hrs rather than 2.5 hr, but once I cleared the city traffic, the run was good. I'd booked a cabin in C'maine, it being rather an expensive area and motel rooms being $100/night and up. It was a bit chilly but once I'd worked out the heating system was comfortable enough.

I'd decided to do this club TT because the next in the Masters' series is here and I'd like to pre-ride/race the course as I'm sure others have done before me. The course is a nice one although the railway lines after a sharp downhill right angled bend is a bit dicey on a wet day (as it was) and I thought the turnaround was located poorly. There was a tailwind going out and so a regular hoon fest and then a struggle fest coming home. I passed seven people so that was good for the ego, especially as I wasn't going full gas. The course was just under 20km.

My warm down consisted of a very brief spin followed by a rapid re-packing of the car, a dipping of the finger in ice to control swelling and bleeding(see previous post) and an apologetic early departure.

Then followed a somewhat difficult drive via Shepparton to Wangaratta...difficult cos somehow one of my contacts slid under my eyelid which resulted in me being blind in one eye. If I'd been sensible I'd have stopped and taken the other one out and worn my glasses, but I'm not. So I drove for 3 hours with one eye closed! Actually that's a lie...it only became a problem when it got dark.

My motel at Wangaratta is next to an Indian restaurant and was hosting a wedding, so my evening's entertainment was Bollywood style.

Next day dawned relatively windless but wettish. I needed rather a longer warm up that usual and definitely struggled big time for the first 2km...I thought there was a head wind, but on talking to others, I realise it was just my fatigue. I managed a PB by just a bit..but this was comparing to a time that included a punctured tyre, so .....

The rider one minute behind eventually caught me on a slight rise (I suck on hills) after which we were riding at approx the same speed and occasionally I was catching her up. The rural roads do have one problem which is difficult to overcome and that is: they are so narrow its hard not to draft...you can't swing very wide to escape the drafting sweet spot. In the end, my slow turn around allowed a better gap to form which made me feel alot more comfortable.

I've been using these TT's not only to race, but to try and up my cadence..but I think somehow I could go faster at my usual slower 75-80 rpm rather than the 85-95 I've been practising...dunno.

The drive home was an ordeal. I fed myself caffeine, indulged in chocolate and had a powernap, then on getting home and after unpacking the car, I ordered myself to bed very early and went out like the proverbial light.....apparently there was a big storm..but I slumbered on totally undisturbed.....

Mistakes..I've made a few

..and some of them I keep making..but not this one.

Warming up pre TT I did as I regularly do on my track bike,,,I held my hand over the front tyre to brush off the gravel I'd just ridden over. Then I reached down and did the same with the back wheel.

UN-fortunately on this particular bike that is a no-can-do since there is virtually NO gap between frame and tyre.

What happened was that my fingers immediately became a very effective brake, the back wheel locked up, and skidded and for one moment I thought falling off was next on the menu. However I managed to stay upright and extract my fingers.

So what to do? the race was 10 minutes away..should I take my gloves off(TG I was wearing gloves!) and expose them to the cold or leave the gloves on to contain the swelling.

I kept them on. Raced and then made a dive for some ice. I now have 1 very bruised and blackened middle finger. I wont be testing anyone's grip for a while and shaking hands is just not an option!

This is one of those mistakes I will NOT be repeating!

Raced well despite having a bit of difficulty with brake and gear changing. Tail wind going out..since I'm also racing a TT tomorrow, I didn't quite go full gas.

A busy weekend and my track SRM

Last weekend I stayed up to watch the TdF live. This weekend I'm too busy racing and motorpacing to be able to "enjoy the moment", watching instead a recording of the stage. Actually the lights went out on Le Tour for me a bit when Cadel cracked. Actually they went out a long way back..to the day of the TTT. Such an unfair concept in a tour IMHO.

My Saturday motorpacing date was shifted from 1200 back to 0830 which suited me fine...getting up early is no hardship to me. I lost the ability to sleep when Alex was born and haven't managed to re-discover it.

Coburg track is nice to ride when its not windy. It was windy. I struggled behind the bike as riding into the wind the motorbike lost up to 2kph when I suddenly was up his backside and then on the opposite side had to spin like mad to catch up as he roared off into the sunset.

One things for sure..my startle reflex is gold standard:
most laps as we turned into the head wind I'd find myself almost riding into the exhaust pipe
whereupon the reflex kicked in and I shot out to the side, into the wind, losing far too much speed
whereupon I had to accelerate to catch up
which I managed to achieve by the top turn
whereupon the tail wind kicked in and...........
so on and so forth.
Character building!

Today was another road TT...this time at the Boulie. We were last there in May when I cranked out a REALLY slow time...almost 2 minutes slower than last year. I rationalized that last year I was in a different phase of my training, being on the verge of leaving for the World Masters Road champs and so was really well in tune with hills! However that was actually just me rationalising. I just rode really badly.

Today I did alot better..not as quite good as last year but alot better than in May. The temp was freezing and for the second TT EVER, I wore gloves, arm warmers and an undershirt....as well as the skinsuit (!!!). The post race shower at home was more to warm up than get clean.

My track SRM has bedded in nicely. I use the same powercontrol for all 3 bikes..version 6..ie wireless. I have 2 durace power cranks and also magnets hanging off odd places on all 3 bikes. The road version is the usual durace one but the track one is a bit of an enigma since I can't find it on the web site and I'm not sure if its very old or very new. Logic would lend towards new since it is wireless... more detail next week.

TT over and I piked on the RR

Windy windy windy. Blustery, scarey...other races around Melbourne were cancelled even!

With the conditions deteriorating, the time you rode the race had a considerable effect on your result as I discovered when I pre-rode the course (although since you started within a few minutes of other people in your grade and endured roughly the same conditions, it made no diff to the results). It was just ironic that the stronger riders were the early starters when it was relatively calm ... heavy emphasis on the word relatively but! ....

I was 1 min 40 slower than last year and lost virtually all of that on the first bit, with the wind coming from the left, when I was blown all over the road and was really scared 'cos I wanted to get off the aerobars onto the handlebars but the bike was too unstable for me to do that......poor choice of front wheel.

I lost the rest of the time (mebbe 10-15s) into the wind after the first corner (last year I had a bum to chase) and then held up for the last bit when the wind came over my right shoulder and the final hoon into the finish, passing 2 riders. A positive was that my avg cadence was higher by quite a bit.

So I left and came home. My original intention was to do the pm RR, but wind and rain with a small group would only pull me down and given my slow recovery nowadays, that's something I don't want...or perhaps I'm just a wimp .....so a pm session on the rollers in front of the TV watching the second half of yesterday's TdF is now on the cards.

Long ride tomorrow, weather permitting.

QB3 Day 2. Morning race 21.6km TT

Last night it poured down..this morning it didn't, but it was a bit chilly so I wore the arm warmers but still no gloves. It was the right decision.

Today I opted to use the Xentis front wheel for the first time. Using it meant I was unable to get a speed reading as the Suunto skewer, which is my speed reader, sits a long way from the spokes and so even a rare earth magnet would fail to get a signal. So, instead of knowing how fast I was going, I kept an eye on my cadence, power and heart rate. I passed 3 people and had a minor lapse of concentration about 1/3 the way through.

I did a 40 second PB and came in second in the group and apparently beat heaps of guys. The race timing is 6 secs slow so they had me at 36.46 when actually I was 36.40..but it doesn't matter as it'd be the same for everyone.

I'm sitting in my room shivering and wondering whether or not I'll complete all 4 races. I'll definitely race this pm although the rain radar doesn't look too good, but will wait and see about tomorrow.

Well now it has JUST started chucking it down...maybe a change of mind is about to happen!