Training Week

After last weekends Gold Coast Triathlon I thought that I would be having a rest but that definitely was not the case. After being away my weekly averages on the bike had dropped and I knew I had to start some serious running training.

The week started on Tuesday with an easy 40km on the bike on the Gold Coast and then running started on Wednesday where I ran 10km and wow! Didn't this hurt! That was the furthest I had run since state triathlon back in February.

Thursday consisted of a double run day, 5km in the morning and then another run session in the afternoon down in Townsville. Yes that's right, I was off travelling again. My afternoon session consisted of 5mins easy, 10mins hard followed by 10x 30second efforts.

Friday was a rest day for running but this is where my serious riding began, well at least what I thought was going to be serious. I had arranged to go on a bunch ride in Townsville and this ended up only being the easiest 30km followed but two hours at the coffee shop afterwards, those actions just made me sound like a complete coffee rider and please don't get the impression that I am ha-ha. I was so annoyed about the lack of mileage that I had to go out in the afternoon and smack out a quick 50km to make up for the lost kilometres in the morning. This put my Friday totals up to 80km.

On Saturday I was supposed to meet another bunch in Townsville and thankfully this was a little bit more up to my standards. I met the bunch at 5:30am and we headed to Harvey’s Range, the pace was steady all the way there and as we hit the climb a few of the guys attacked and I wasn't able to hang on. Once I was dropped I got into my rhythm and I started catching the other riders. When I reached the top of the climb I met a cyclist by the name of Ruth Corset and she rides for the Holden Women’s Cycling team. I had recently just seen her win a stage in the Adelaide Tour, so when she fronted to the ride I recognised her immediately. We finished the day off with 131km and I thought it was a bit of an honour to ride with her. Running wise I did a 7km session when I returned to Cairns that afternoon, which involved 6x 3minute intervals. It was a pretty tough session but I was determined to finish it because I have ambitions of doing really well in Cross Country and in the rest of the triathlon season.

Sunday was going to be a somewhat hard day because I wanted to ride again (I think I’m addicted) and I also had to do a long run. I did an easy 60km ride to start my morning off and then I rode another easy 30km in the afternoon with a few mates from my running group. The rest of the athletes who I train with did their long run in the morning and the furthest someone did was about 11km. I get competitive when people run longer than my longest run recorded on my watch so I became very determined to beat what the others had done. I felt really good as I set into it so I kept on running, as it progressed I felt a few little niggles but by this time I was so far into it that I knew I couldn't stop. When I got home I had clocked up just over 15km, smashing what the others had done. I had actually run for so long that it was dark outside and Mum went out looking for me…Whoops!

My weekly totals came to:

            Cycling: 350km

Running: 42km

I can say that I am extremely happy with how that week went. It will be interesting to see if I can sustain those averages especially when I add swimming into the equation. I guess it's a little bit of trial and error but for the first week of hard training I am proud of my efforts.

Gold Coast Triathlon, Luke Harrop Memorial Race

Yesterday I raced in the Gold Coast Triathlon, Luke Harrop Memorial race. I hadn’t done too much training for this event so this meant I didn't have any pressure on myself to perform, although I knew that I would still race as hard as I could. We had to check our bikes in the night before and this is quite different to our races back home. I came into transition the next morning and set everything up like I normally would.

I wandered down to the swim start early to make sure that I had enough time to warm up. It took me some time to get into the water because the water was a little bit chillier than I expected. I was able to get a small warm up in before I was called to the start line to get underway with everyone that was racing in an under 20’s age group. I knew that coming into this race with no swim training I was going to struggle through the swim but I didn't want to admit that to anyone. I worked as hard as I could throughout the first leg of the triathlon but I did struggle and I felt like that was the longest swim I’ve ever done.

I emerged from the water and was eager to get onto the bike. This was the easiest of the three legs and I felt like I hardly had to try to keep a good average speed. I remember that some guy had past me and I didn't particularly like that, so I clicked down a couple of gears and picked up my speed and rode straight back past him. I never saw him again. I felt like I was in my zone on the bike and I had the most fun here and for the first time I somewhat enjoyed myself. My mum always says to have fun before I start my races and I always tell her that I can’t have fun because I have to be serious, but yesterday when I was out on the bike, I had fun.

As I came off the bike and came across the dismount line my legs didn't want to run. I remember thinking to myself sarcastically, wow what a great way to end a good bike ride, with a run. I got my shoes on and saved the activity on my Garmin so I could later upload it to Strava later and then I started to run. I felt heavy, but I soon found my running legs, I got into a good rhythm and had a good pace, but as I came into the second lap I started to feel a blister on my toe and I could feel some chafing starting to set in. I stopped during the run to try and adjust my shoe to make it more comfortable but that didn't help. I knew that there wasn't far to go so I thought I would just push through. I started running fast, really fast, too fast, but now I couldn't feel the pain and I got into a zone. As I ran into the finish chute I tried to enjoy myself, I knew that I was nowhere near a good time so the next best thing was to have a good time and enjoy the moment.

On an overall it was a really great event and one that I recommend to anyone. It was really well organised and the course was very easy to understand. Although it was nowhere near my best performance I came in 4^th in my age group, which was 16-19 years. I personally think that anyone out there looking for a good race, than the Gold Coast Triathlon Luke Harrop Memorial is a very good race to go and compete in. I am already planning on returning next year and I am hoping to bring some more people down with me.

Radio Interview

Just thought that I would quickly share the link to my radio interview on the squeaky wheel yesterday.


Interview starts about 5mins in.

I have to Gold Coast Triathlon in the morning so I'll be off to bed early and I am hoping that I have a good race tomorrow. I will be on tomorrow night with a race report and my thoughts on the race and the course.

Gold Coast Triathlon and Radio Interview

I arrived on the Gold Coast yesterday for this weekends Luke Harrop triathlon. My mum and I arrived early to somewhat adapt to the conditions down here. It was quite lucky that we were able to get away this weekend because there is a cyclone approaching the coast of Far North Queensland and it going to hit tonight. The bureau of meteorology has classified it as a very strong category four and could almost be a category five.

Today I travelled to Brisbane for an interview with Brisbane radio host Phil Smith. He hosts a cycling program on ABC radio called the Squeaky Wheel. It was such a wonderful experience for me because I have never been on the radio. I was so nervous though because you don't have anytime to think of your answer, so I stumbled a few times. What I found pretty cool was the fact that it was just one big conversation for the whole time and how chilled out it was, although I have now gained a lot more respect for radio hosts and how they can sit there and talk the whole time.

I race the triathlon Sunday morning and I would say that I’m under prepared. Since state triathlon in Hervey Bay, I have been sick with the flu and colds and haven’t done any swim training, although my bike and run legs are feeling very good, so I hopefully I can make up a lot of time up in those areas. I’m aiming for somewhere around 1hr 3-5minutes, so if I can finish in that time then I will be very happy. I have no pressure on myself for this race, but I’ll still go as hard and as fast as I can.

I’ll write again on Sunday night with a race report and will put a copy of the link to the radio recording when it is released.

Cairns Cycling Club Criterium

This morning I raced in the Cairns Cycling Club criterium. Thankfully the weather gods kept the rain away for the race, which was extremely lucky because it rained on the way into town. Just like usual there weren’t many riders in A grade, only five, compared to the fifteen or so that raced in B grade. There were two men that fronted up to race, Adam Cobain and Paul Mashford and well I knew that they were going to battle it to end and it was going to be a very quick race.

We took it relatively easy from the start, in saying that we averaged about 40km/h for the whole race. In the early stages of the race, my cornering was horrendous and this caused me to expel large amounts of energy trying to re-join the group every time we came to a corner. As the race progressed I was able to find the right line to through each turn and this meant I was able to come out of each corner still intact with the other riders. Mashford tried extensively to attack and escape off the front, but he wasn't able to do so today. On one occasion when he accelerated I was left to chase him down and when I was chasing I hit speeds of 54km/h. I somewhat struggled at the beginning of the race but as it progressed I felt stronger and more capable of holding those speeds. We came around the corner onto the home straight after 45 minutes of racing and received three laps to go, from here the paced stayed the same, I told myself that if I have held on this whole way I would be in with a chance to contest the sprint.

We came in with one lap to go and I found myself in a dangerous position of second wheel. By this time there were only three riders left including myself. Mashford was on the front and I knew that by being in second wheel, if he pulled off I would be left to lead out the sprint which I didn't want to do, so I pulled out to let Cobain roll through. I was now sitting in a comfortable third position and this gave me the opportunity to have more of a lead out, which played to my advantage. Mashford slowed the pace right down to about 30km/h, so it was here that I clicked down a couple of gears, knowing that it was going to come down to a sprint between the three of us. As we came into the home straight the pace started to rise and as the sprint began I found that the gear I had chosen was too big. I knew I had to dig extremely deep if I wanted to pull this off and well I was just strong enough to nudge myself into second place behind Mashford with Cobain in third. I was stoked with what I had achieved as this was my best result in an A grade race. I still have some learning to go, especially with gear selection, but I am getting better and I hope next time I can come out even stronger.

Sitting in with the bunch, but still working hard

School Cross Country 2014

Today I raced my annual school cross-country. This first race is the start of the cross-country season and well I only decided to actually race cross-country this season on Monday. It took some hard thinking and a little bit of persuasion from my coach Jill and some other members of our running group. Anyway…I turned up at the track today way too early so I decided to walk it to see how it looked and determine how muddy it was, this gave me to opportunity to decide what shoes I would run in. I noticed that just by walking the course my hip was already sore, this automatically gave me a negative feeling before I had even started the race. I knew by then I need to have a good warm up to loosen off my hip and hope that it didn't give me too much grief during the race. I also knew that I definitely wasn't ‘running fit’ meaning I was nowhere near the fitness I need to be to run a good race. This was somewhat demoralizing and because of this I knew I had a fault line in my preparation and this meant that I could be beaten. I didn't like this feeling and I knew that I would have to work extra hard if I wanted to cross that line in first place. My plan that I had established was to go out hard and hang on, this is one that I acquired from ultra-athlete Mike Le-Roux.

I stepped up to the line and by the time this came, my heart felt like it was in my mouth. As the gun sounded I sprinted as hard as I could, still going by the saying, go out hard and hang on. I worked myself to a relatively good lead where I felt comfortable with the distance I had made. By this time my arms were filled with lactic acid, to point where I didn't have any feeling and I had to shake my arms to try and pump some blood into them. The lactic acid that I had created forced me to slow down dramatically to the point where I was now running at a jog. I had enough distance on the other runners to hang on until the end. I finished the 2.7km course in 9:51:17. I think that this was a pretty good effort considering the lack of training that I have been doing for running.

Since my decision to keep running throughout this year I have also come to the decision to also focus on triathlons as well as my cycling because I thought that if I do put so much effort into the two sports riding and running, why not put the same amount of effort for the last one, swimming. I still have my main goal of cycling, where I am hoping to go down south this year for the State Road Race, but I will continue to race triathlon throughout this year with the intentions of hopefully making the QLD team next year. I am also going to spend a lot of time running because my coach thinks that I will be able to do really well at State Cross-Country this year so I thought why not give it one last crack. Depending on how well I do there, will determine whether or not I travel to Brisbane later in the year for State Athletics.