Sweaty week

Tuesday
The first day of the working week after the Australia Day long weekend. I attempted again to do both Tues and Thurs Boundary riders and went pretty well on Tuesday, largely keeping up with the paceline and then just tagging onto the tail and hanging on grimly after the first round. Unfortunately I had a spoke break just as I was about to descend the Spit. One of the guys stayed with me and helped me try to get it off, but ended up just twisting it around the other spokes. We only took a minute, then rode off together to catch the group. I saw them riding away just as we were getting near the top of Parriwi and we never saw them again.

It was a little annoying as over the past couple of weeks the whole group has waited a long time for people with flat tyres, over 10 minutes both times. I have no problem with that and I think it’s really nice, but with that in mind I would have thought they could have given us 3 or 4 minutes to catch up, especially as a whole bunch of people saw the spoke break and me pull off. I guess they only wait for the “regulars” and I’m just not part of the “in” crowd yet. It’s not a source of bother for me, just an observation. It was nice that the one bloke stopped and then his mate was waiting for him at the top of Parrawi and the 3 of us rode the rest of the way together.

I’m happy my legs lasted the ride after finishing my run at almost 8pm the night before. My legs were not in ideal shape however, and I couldn’t face the 45 minutes of interval running (1 min on, 30 sec off) on the lunchtime menu, so instead took the easier option of Pain in the Domain. It was a good session, I was running right at the back of group 1 / group 2, but I felt pretty happy with even managing to keep up considering I’d been hammering my legs since Saturday.

Wednesday
I got back into yoga after 2 weeks, which was glorious and made me resolve once again to get there more often! Then had a swim at lunchtime with Dan and the Macquarie guys which turned out to be hard, I think my body was just exhausted.

I didn’t get much sleep last night because I went to see Ngapartji Ngapartji at the Belvoir Street theatre and got home quite late. Amazing show, highly recommended (although it is sold out already).

My angel wife Sarah had taken the bike wheel to the bike shop to get a new spoke and straighten the wheel (it was badly bent out of shape), it came back with a punctured tube (grrrrr) so I had to do an 11pm change and grabbed about 5.5 hours sleep before getting up for Boundary again.

Thursday
I felt good this morning actually. Part of my theory of a sleep kicking in on the second day. Anyhoo did Boundary again and it’s still hard, but getting better. A bit faster today and the paceline hammered me, I took one turn and then had to completely drop off. Luckily a nice fella pushed me back to the group and the lights helped too.

Then ran with the Tues/Thurs Hickson Road group at lunch a few minutes ago. Uber hot and humid, we did 5 x 1.2km laps of Hickson and I kept up ok over the first 3, then died in the arse on the last two. I finished absolutely dripping with sweat and gasping, and then limped back to the office to rehydrate. My splits were:

Time Av HR
4:11 - 153
4:08 - 158
4:09 - 165
4:22 - 167
4:30 - 167