Catch up 1

Wrote this in Word on December 15 and hvane posted it yet.

As well as spending 10 days away from computers on holiday I have continued to suffer my motivational crisis. I really cannot be bothered doing lots of things and keeping this record up to date has been one of those things. When I look at my last post from almost a month ago if suggest the same thing. So it is time to kick start the festive season and my event plan for 2007 with a blog update and good intentions to keep it up to date again.

Biking

Over the past month I or so I have done very little riding, I rode Wednesday night at Woodhill for the first time in ages. I took the AC for its maiden Woodhill voyage under my guidance. Found it tricky at first as I am used to riding the trails on the single speed, it took me a good hour to relax into riding a fully suspended bike, though at the end I was still grinding up climbs in the wrong gear. Riding down SPCA was so different, I had the seat too low, was always in the wrong gear and was bouncing around all over the place, I found there is a real difference in body positioning and balance between riding a hard tail and a fully suspended bike, I intend on riding the fully more over the next few weeks as I my ‘training plan’ is going to be based around road miles and 1 fun ride mid-week.

Last weekend I attended the final round of the Auckland MTB champs at Riverhead forest. Apart from an ill-fated run down to the bike shop the previous day I had not been on the bike for almost 5 weeks, so ‘racing’ at Riverhead was a bad idea. The day was good and there had not been too much rain in the preceding days so the course was remarkably dry, though Riverhead bogs never go away, its just the size that varies. I found the race to be incredibly tough, it was the first event I have ever competed in that I did not enjoy, not helped either by my first off road flat tyre…. The course was really not designed for single speeders, let alone unfit single speeders who have not been on their bike for 4 – 5 weeks. 9 started, 7 finished and I came last of the finishers, plus I only completed 2 of the 3 laps. I was not the only 1 who competed who did not finish though, there were a lot of drop outs in the geared classes as well. When I got home I found I had another flat tyre, which including the flat I had when I rode to the shops the previous day, means 3 flats in 2 days. I suspect something is up with my rim. One day I will take the tyre off and have a look, lethargy has prevented that happening so far…

Running.

I have semi-committed to doing the Rotorua marathon on April 28th so my focus over summer will be on getting my running miles up. I have also semi-committed to do the 70k Colville connection MTB race on 10 March so I need to develop a training plan till then that will get me some base miles on the bike up as well. Colville is 90% gravel road so road riding will be the go for training.

This weekend I aim to get together a decent training plan that will allow me to increase mileage on both bike and foot until Colville at least has passed. I am not really concerning myself with Colville too much, but I do have a time (and friends) to beat !