Jamberoo

Another solid weekend of training just passed, which I was very happy with.

Saturday
We had a full day planned for Prash's birthday down at Jamberoo Action Park where apparently "you control the action"... by conforming to the extraordinarily strict set of guidelines for each ride. Naturally I couldn't miss out on an opportunity for a long ride so I jumped on the bike at 6am to meet everyone down there for 10.30.

Thankfully I caught up with a group at Centennial Park and stuck with them riding along the Eastern Distributor past the airport, through the tunnel, and down almost all the way to Cronulla. Perfect, I wouldn't have wanted to take on the Distributor solo, even at that time of the morning. Then I took off down Kingsway myself and right before hopping onto the Princes Hwy I found another group! Solid. Had a nice chat with an older bloke who'd just got into cycling 3 years ago when his doctor told him he needed to change his lifestyle (and he read a statistic that 90% of men told to change their lifestyle by their doctor don't do it). We had a good chat and I pulled off at Waterfall To go solo down through the National Park. It was a glorious morning and a beautiful descent... until I saw some poor bastard who’d stacked and who’s arm was bent at an unnatural angle and who had a dirty great hole in his knee which looked awful. He was being assisted by a few guys and there was nothing I could do so I continued on a bit more warily.

Through the park, down past Stanwell Tops and followed the coast road into Wollongong and beyond, continuing all the way to Shellharbour. There I swung a right onto Lake’s Entrance Rd (along the southern side of Lake Illawarra) and followed the signs to Albion Park where I had a call from Sarah saying they’d just arrived around the corner at Jamberoo and where was I? I estimated I was about 15 mins away but rather than make everyone wait I got Sarah to drive down the road and pick me up while I continued on. I was only about a km away when we met up and I’d had a great ride. 130km on the clock from my house, no hills to speak of, perfect weather and I still felt really good at the end. Slow deflation from my back tyre, but I managed to make it there without a change.

Then it was 6 hours in the waterpark of constant running around, going on every single ride as many times as we could, only stopping briefly for lunch with the whole group of about 20 who came down together. It was a fantastic day, loads of fun and just non-stop. When the place closed and they kicked us out we drove back to Sydney and went directly to dinner at a great Vietnamese place in Regents Park and finally struggled home exhausted at 11pm. It was a long and extremely knackering day.

Sunday
I was tossing up doing the Balmoral Triathlon in the morning but was utterly wiped out from the day before and just needed to sleep in. I got up just in time to cruise down to Manly for the Cole Classic ocean swim. It was raining on and off the whole time and the surf was pretty wild at Manly (not that bad though). This meant the swim start and finish was moved to Shelly Beach. I really did enjoy the swim, the water was warm and clear and that part going over the reef along the seawall is awesome. The only downsides were that they screwed up measuring the altered course and it was only 1.2km instead of the 2km it was supposed to be. The other thing was that it didn’t really feel like a proper ocean swim since there was no surf at the start and end! Anyway I’m not whinging, just observing, it was a great swim and I managed to meet up with a bunch of guys I knew.

After lunch with my folks we went home so Sarah could prepare lessons for the week and I could nap. I woke up feeling a lot more refreshed and decided to get a long run in, so headed out quite late (6pm) for a 3 hour, 30km run along the harbour. I didn’t push nearly as hard as last week (average HR was 129 as opposed to 140 last week) but I didn’t seem to go that much slower and it was nice slogging along in the misting rain. Sarah was a bit upset when I got home after what is normally my bedtime, she was worried about what had happened to me, I guess I didn't really communicate how long I was intending to go for since the fire alarm was sounding and people were evacuating our building when I left!

Anyway getting home that late meant there was no chance of getting up for an early session of anything this morning. So I didn’t, slept in and then since it was pouring rain and my legs were shot, got the train into work. Was considering a swim at lunchtime, but on reflection total rest seemed like a better idea. Mmmm recovery day.