Friday, January 14, 2005
Day 3
I did my 4km in the pool in the morning which consisted of 800m straight, 8x100 on 2:00, 8x50 on 1:00, three times through. It was pretty tough. In the lane of the "more relaxed pace" as Scott Molina called it, I was the lead out man and felt the pressure to swim a half decent pace.
I ran back from the pool with Peter (my competitor in IMNZ). He kept getting close to me and I eventually figured out he was reading my heart rate on his watch to see how I was going? He's marking me! He's a strong swimmer and biker but I should do a faster run. Should be interesting come March 5.
We were going to stay at Goulburn for a second night so we just did an out and back 90km. Well that was the intention but it was stinking hot (38-40?) and VERY windy. We were working out all the angles so we didn't have to ride home in a head wind. Most of us decided to ride to Crookwell and back but that would make it 110km. 20km too far in my book (1 point for 90km and the next at 125km). I dropped something early in the ride and went back for it and only John Newsom waited for me. He's an ex short course pro so I stayed on his wheel. As it turned out, there was a lot of climbing into the hot wind so we turned around at the 38km mark by which time we picked up the yellow jersey (Peter) who was experiencing some "personal time", and roared downhill, downwind back to Goulburn then sat in an airconditioned service station eating ice creams and drinking chocolate milk trying to drum up the courage to go back out. We bought a bag of ice and filled up our bidons with it, which worked well for 20 minutes before it became hot again. We tried to design the next 24km so it was as painless as possible but most of it was pretty miserable and painfully slow progress into the wind. Even though it was only 90km it was very tough mentally for me.
A group made it all the way to Crookwell uagainst the wind and came across a wind farm and one of the athletes from the USA cried out "They even grow the stuff here!".
In the evening Gordo warned us about the next two days. He said we'll have a long one tomorrow as we ride to Narooma and the day after will be the toughest ride of the camp as we go from the coast to Cooma.
Swim: 4km 1:23
Bike: 91km 3:22 avg 26.8 (730m of ascending)
Run 12km 1:00
I ran back from the pool with Peter (my competitor in IMNZ). He kept getting close to me and I eventually figured out he was reading my heart rate on his watch to see how I was going? He's marking me! He's a strong swimmer and biker but I should do a faster run. Should be interesting come March 5.
We were going to stay at Goulburn for a second night so we just did an out and back 90km. Well that was the intention but it was stinking hot (38-40?) and VERY windy. We were working out all the angles so we didn't have to ride home in a head wind. Most of us decided to ride to Crookwell and back but that would make it 110km. 20km too far in my book (1 point for 90km and the next at 125km). I dropped something early in the ride and went back for it and only John Newsom waited for me. He's an ex short course pro so I stayed on his wheel. As it turned out, there was a lot of climbing into the hot wind so we turned around at the 38km mark by which time we picked up the yellow jersey (Peter) who was experiencing some "personal time", and roared downhill, downwind back to Goulburn then sat in an airconditioned service station eating ice creams and drinking chocolate milk trying to drum up the courage to go back out. We bought a bag of ice and filled up our bidons with it, which worked well for 20 minutes before it became hot again. We tried to design the next 24km so it was as painless as possible but most of it was pretty miserable and painfully slow progress into the wind. Even though it was only 90km it was very tough mentally for me.
A group made it all the way to Crookwell uagainst the wind and came across a wind farm and one of the athletes from the USA cried out "They even grow the stuff here!".
In the evening Gordo warned us about the next two days. He said we'll have a long one tomorrow as we ride to Narooma and the day after will be the toughest ride of the camp as we go from the coast to Cooma.
Swim: 4km 1:23
Bike: 91km 3:22 avg 26.8 (730m of ascending)
Run 12km 1:00
# posted by Vernon @ 2:58 PM 
