A week without travelling.

Well way too long since my last post.  I decided that I had had enough of traveling and spent all of the week before in Brisbane.  It was great to be home every night, to have different options for training, and to be a bit warmer than Melbourne typically is.  Having a life again did mean that I had little time to sit down and write up a posting, so here it is now.

Things have been progressing reasonably well.  I still have issues with my Achilles and still need to do more, but it is winter so plenty of time to go yet.  

On the Saturday  of July 2nd I got up early and in the cold to ride with the Red Dog Tri squad. The reason I was very keen to do that was to ride the Mt Nebo - Mt Glorious route that is a local classic.  These big hills are both on Brisbane's north side and we live on the south side.  In my whole time here I have now had exactly 2 rides on the north side.  It just seems such a hassle to fight through the city to get out to the interesting stuff so I haven't bothered.  The infamous part of the ride itself is 19km of pretty much continuous uphill, rising some 650m.  This is a real leg buster, and by the time I returned home I had clocked up just over 100k with total ascent of more than 1500m.  It was a fantastic ride and I can't wait to get back to give it a better go.  As it was my first time up I was taking it pretty conservatively, everyone was telling me at the bottom how long and grinding it was.  The 19km took me around 57 minutes which isn't too bad given the gradient, so with that time there as a benchmark the next run will be interesting.  Here is the elevation profile as recorded on the GPS logger I talked about last time.  It even looks tough on paper.

Surprisingly the next day when I went out for a middling run the legs and general fatigue levels were not too bad at all.  So hopefully that is a good sign that the fitness levels are starting to pick up.

With spending the whole week at home it did provide for some variety in the training.  The lunch time Red Dog Tri swim sessions on Monday & Friday had both been canceled due to the Valley Pool being used for a water polo competition.
I still swam these two lunchtimes though, at the Centenary Pool.  It might be winter here in Queensland but by lunchtime the temp is typically around 20 degrees and swimming outdoors with the sun on your back is just great.  Then a couple of rides after work with the nightlights running, it can be a little cool by then but still pretty pleasant really.  So the week ended up with 9 sessions in all, 3 of each, 3 days with two sessions a day, 3 days with one, and a rest day.  All in all pretty good.  The runs were nice and consistent, all around 8k, one a bit quicker but the other two just steady.

More to come.