New group ride

6am Sunday morning, time to get up for the pending group ride.  Meeting at 7am for a 7.15 departure.  To bad I have spent the last hour coughing up my lungs!.  Poor Liza, no sunday sleep in this weekend, although I had planned to sneak out of the house, seems all the family (who came to stay for weekend, sweet) got up also.  Oops. 

New ride group this morning with nz-cyclists and I gotta say everyone was great and very supportive.  Unfortunately the other two trainee buddies weren't in top form either, one decide to knock off a quick 80k+ on Saturday and the other hard gone hard out all week and had to play a semi final hockey Sunday afternoon.  So... sick and sore we excused ourselves from the group, but only after we promised to return the following week :)  Then rather than the planned 100k+ us sad sacks managed to knock out a good 40k, with hills!!!   See below.....

Now we are not completely slack bums as we agreed to ride a bit further on Tuesday and Thursdays so meeting at 5.30am, rather than 6am.  I think that is commitment!.

Going soft!

It's Saturday morning and I should be hardout training in the normal brick class but today I have taken the soft route and my excuse is a head cold which I eluded too in the last installment.

Im really keen to do the 100-120k ride tomorrow so thought to take one extra day to recover.  Besides the sister in law and 2 out of the 3 kids have come to Auckland for an impromtu visit, heading to the airport to collect them in a few minutes.... Yay!!!!!

Just got an email from the Ironman NZ folks promoting their 30th anniversary for the 2014 race.  Apparently all entries in 2013 are guaranteed a spot in the anniversary race.  I wonder how my wife would feel about this, since I promised to only do such things every second year.......

Missed group ride this AM

It's Thursday and all I want to do is crawl into bed.  Not feeling 100% think Im coming down with a cold, the normal headache, achy body (maybe this could be from the weekend?) sore throat and ears ...... blah blah blah.  Had planned to call in sick but unfortunately it  just means I will have more work to do tomorrow and would need to cancel and reschedule a heap of meetings planned for this afternoon.

Bummed that I missed my ride group this morning, but ended up sleeping thru the alarm, expect because not feeling well.  Surprising since I do have more than one alarm set, which Liza appreciates every morning hehe.  So I have been privileged to attend a couple of group rides with the Quay St guys, hence thought I would share my early observations and a couple of tips/rules.....

Observations:
1. You would be amazed how many riders are on the roads at 6am or earlier
2. Groups are like tribes, with their own name i.e. Cafe St guys, Baker Boys ...
3. Riders have their own sign language, in short if they point or wave, move or you will hit something
4. Riders have their own sayings i.e. car up, car back, all on ....
5. At first other riders can be overwhelming but dont be scared off, everyone I met is very supportive
6. Find a group that suites your ability and your personality
7. Wear fluro if you need to, but keep it to a minimum
8. If you got reflectors on your bike, remove them immediately
9. Unless you are a PRO or riding in a team, stay away from the matching outfit i.e. poker dot outfit seen the other day
10. You get what you pay for


Rules:
1. Never half wheel anyone or use your brakes when in a bunch (my first lesson)
2. Always have enough cash for a coffee, as rides either start or end at a cafe
3.  "HTFU" 
4.  "HTFU"
5. In all cases "HTFU"


I will tell you more about half wheeling in a later installment.

The showdown weekend

A couple of old nanas sitting on the couch oohing and ahhing everytime we move.  A busy weekend kicked off on Saturday with the normal brick session, although given the beautiful sunny day I could not bring myself to do wind trainer indoors so I skipped that and headed for a road ride after the swim.  No running today (bonus) due to the run race on Sunday.

Sunday, the big race! and some might say the rematch between Liza and myself.  Some background for those not in the know .... in our first ever event together, I was much fitter than Liza so ran and biked with her the whole way UNTIL we got within 10 metres of the finish line, when I went to grab her hand so we could pass the line together, Mrs got white line fever and gave me the stiff arm and then made a mad dash to the line and hence taking the win by millimetres.  So back to current ..... today was going to be the agreed rematch, and winner takes bragging rights and loser must be the others slave for one day.

GO LIZA!

What can I say ^&%#@!     I hope when I am slave, she takes it easy :(

So this is how it played out, a half marathon distance on the North Shore, so nothing is flat.  She took off at a steady pace along the beach with a short up hill, I took it slow as I know I need time to warm up the joints anyway I know I can kick ass on the uphills so was not worried.  Perhaps I should have remembered that if there is a hill there is normally a corresponding downhill and Liza long legs is turning into a gun on the downhill.

I suspect following a group the wrong way down north head, getting to a dead end, meaning we had to run back up the hill to find where we had missed the turn off didn't help the spirits, neither did getting passed by two walkers !  I was running, admittedly not fast but running all the same....

About 13k into the 21 - I was really starting to feel the pain, I have been getting sore hips in the last week, a recurrance of long hours of training and a misaligned body.  Some nights the ache can make me restless.  So I need to get back to the chiropractor and keep on stretching.  Anyhow in the past I would have pushed thru to finish the event, however now I know today was a training run and is NOT the end game.  So why risk injury ?  Hence I decided to DNF, limp back to the start/finish line and cheer on some mates and Liza.

For about 10sec at the end Liza was gutted, she thought I had past her and she had missed me.  She was tyring to work out how I got to the end before her.  To bad I cannot keep a straight face.:)

Wind Trainer Class No More!

Now regular readers will know I loath Wind Trainer classes, major boring ......... so how exciting that I have met up with a local group who ride Tuesdays and Thursday mornings on a regular route with fast flats, and some hills.  It means I can replace my Wind Trainer sessions with these morning rides and pickup the swim in the evening.  Double sweet!

Apparently they have some crazy pac to ride in all weather, and although I am up for most things, I think I will just make sure I have a waiver/out clause for a "just in case"... I mean some may call me crazy for signing up for Ironman, but gee I aint that crazy to promise in all weather!

Liza and I went out on Wednesday night with a couple of mates, first time we had caught up since the wedding, so a few stories to tell.  Unfortunately a mid-night finish, not so cool when the alarm goes off at 5.15am.  I must really love these group rides!! :) So tonight I get time to write this blog, cos Liza has sneaked off to bed at 8.30pm, I need to explain rule no.5 

I have included my first ride, so I can compare the stats in a few months.  The route is no secret, its you, your group and 25,000 other crazy cyclists.  Its kinda like running the TAN in Melbourne, if you have done it before you will know what I mean, it must be the only running route in Melbourne, get the picture.

A new strategy

Dont you hate when someone points out the obvious!.  Well only because I did'nt think of it myself.  Regular readers will know I have trouble balancing between work and training.  So I will be taking a new strategy where I will deadicate time in the morning for training and look to start work around 10am, which sounds bad until you realize I dont generally finish work until late.

I will let you know how it works out.

A lonely ride

I did'nt realize how much I like to ride with a group! Today I did a 60k ride (3 hours), recorded in the Garmin map below.  I love my Garmin!. Previously I had riden both these loops previously in two separate rides, but within no one to talk with, the distances seemed a lot longer than had expected.

Liza was also a super star today as she ran for 2.5 hours whilst I was out riding, now we are like two old ladies having a nana nap on the couch.  I feel totally buggared, which is depressing given I only biked 60K, back in Chch I could bike 90k in 3.5 hours, but yes it was flat, not the undulating country side of Auckland.