14 Weeks Out

Well - I've done the math - and I'm currently 14 weeks out from the Tour Down Under.

This weeks been fab for training (and confidence) as on top of my ride to work on Wednesday, yesterday I rode 65 kms. Now it wasn't continuous - I'm still stopping every 15 kms or so for a drink (probably about 2 - 3 mins) and a big stop halfway - enjoying a relaxing breakfast and a bit of shopping (in my ever so glamorous bike pants and jersey!) - but still I have now covered 2/3rds of the distance for the TDU with 14 weeks remaining. So I'm starting to feel quite confident that I can make the distance - and will start reducing my breaks, although I know I can break on the day as its not a race!

I'm also feeling much more confident on my bike, and learning new things every time I ride.


After having problems with my gears last time - I got hubby to look at them for me, and in doing so he explained the whole gear system to me. Yes, thats right - I'm riding 65kms and don't know anything about the gears! In fact until 10 months ago - I had never ridden a bike with gears! Anyway - what I discovered is that I haven't been operating the front gearing system, which means I have 3 times as many gears! Tried this out on the ride and found the smaller gears were of no use, but the bigger ones (harder to push) allowed me to go much faster. I knew I had strong quads for a reason! Hit a new all time fast speed of 47 km/hr downhill, and worked out that on flat ground I can easily motor along at 30km/hr. Its all good and its all fun.

On the weight side, I braved the scales today and it wasn't good. So I have a new target - back to the clean eating (with the exception of my Friday night pub outing) and I aim to be back to goal by Christmas. (possibly sooner). I've also challenged a face book friend to help with the motivation....

Smashing Times Ahead

I'm really enjoying riding my bike at the moment. On my side bar I set a goal of riding to Pirie in under 1.30 (30kms) and I smashed this on Saturday at 1.20. And today was National Ride to Work Day - so I elected to ride to work (in Pirie). My work colleagues made a big fuss about it - with someone sending out an email to everyone about my "humungous" effort - whereas to me its no longer a big deal, I've done it quite a few times now. (It was nice though) However, what was a big deal to me was that I smashed my time again - 1.10, averaging 26km/hr and a HR of 71%. I was pretty pleased with this average speed - given that the first 10 kms have some heavy duty hills.
One of the reasons for my faster time was that I was having problems with my chain/gearing and was reluctant to change gears very much. So I pretty much rode the whole thing overgeared - meaning that I had to work quite hard, rather than fast spinning, but this seemed to produce much faster speeds, and I discovered that I'm strong enough to maintain this over distance. Now I'm wondering about what the right speed might be for the Tour Down Under... for example do you ride at a slower pace eg 20 km/hr and ride over 5 hours, or do you work harder and ride at 28 km/hr and do it in say 3.5 hrs? Maintaining the pace might be difficult, but 3.5 hours is much closer to what I used to maintaining endurance wise than 5 hrs. And an extra 1.5 hours adds up in the time you have to stay in the saddle and lean forward/take weight through your arms........Mmm a trade off to ponder. I'll get back to you.

On a not so positive note - I've eaten sh**t for the last few weeks due to an enormous amount of work stress I've been under. I've been aware of my poor choices and made a conscious decision to allow it as necessary to coping.... but now my clothes are tighter and I know I need to reign the eating back in, and step up the exercise which has also slackened off. I'm strangely peaceful about this however, as I'm hoping that I'm starting to manage my weight like normal people do - making allowances for ups and downs, and moderating their behaviour to keep their weight under control. Well I hope so.