First Group Ride

What a beautiful day! blue skies, light breeze!. Nice day for a ride. Today I meet a group of 8 (all tri club members) at smales farm, dumb cantab got lost, although I have been there many times. Not entirely sure where we biked but a few good hills and undulations and lots of other riders so clearly it must have been a secret to only me!. In the year that I have lived in Auckland I always found biking hard because the traffic is so heavy and the bike lanes are minimal, unlike home town Christchurch. Any how a good 2 hour ride, with a speed run down Albany hill (fun!). Much to my surprise I could actually keep up with the majority of the group, sweet!. Pete was like the sheperd watching over the flock, he clearly is fitter than everyone else, but he would drop back to talk the tailers up the hills, fixed a flately (not mine) in about 2min and generally just made sure everyone was tracking OK. The group is TOPS and very supportive!!! I really enjoyed the ride so will try to make it a regular thing on a Sunday.

Yesterday’s brick session was tiring, the 60min swim at Takapuna beach was great, about 50 + grazies, this week the dark wasn’t an issue but the sun glaring off the water made the bouy spotting hard work, Im sure we added a few extras ks heading in the wrong direction. The swim was good for me I felt energized and managed to make it to all the bouys before the group started to head back. Many are racing in a few weeks in the “people tri” so we practiced the mass swarm beach start. Suites me! a kick in the head a slap on the back or a boot in the stomach, this is what you get when 50 people are fighting over a couple of metres of start area. Ive done this a few times so can give back as good as I take it. On the ride I ditched the group as they headed to do time trials, I focused on a steady 50min bike ride. But once I got back to the car I was completely buggared, hence not so cheery when we went to try on wedding dresses and wonder around shops for hours. Might have had my grumpby hat on, sorry Liza, LOVE YOU!!!!! XXXX