Small Hiccup - High Motivation

Last weekend I headed to Ballarat to "get away" and get some quality training done for the mind and body. My theory behind this was that if I could survive Ballarat's weather in the middle of winter, training in Melbourne for the remainder would not be to hard.

All good in theory as they say.

Arriving on Friday afternoon at Main Lead Comfort Inn, I cruised out for a 70min run around the old lake (i say old, as due to the drought, there is NO water at all in the lake). The weather was fresh, but was nothing compared to what I was going to encounter the following morning. Feet up for the rest of the night.

Saturday morning I awoke early and peered out the door to find wet roads, not a bad thing as I thought that it would not rain for the 4 1/2 hour ride & 30min run. I changed my original bike route to suit the weather conditions, not wanting to get too far from the hotel and have a mechanical. I managed to find a 25k loop which Incorporated the lake and a couple of suburbs around Ballarat. This was a suitable loop especially after the heavens opened up for the first 2 hours and the last 1 hour. So after being wet to the bone, I was also very cold with a temp of 5 degrees celcius and wind chill of -2 deg celcius, so riding wet in 3 deg was not pleasant.

I am sure that my hands went numb due to the fact that I thought my gloves were actually dry after the first downpour of rain!!!! Got through the session and relaxed back in the hotel for the afternoon.

The plan for Sunday was to ride 1 hour and run 1 hour in the morning and back it up with a swim session in the afternoon with another 30min run following.

So getting up early, hoping that the weather was more pleasant, I headed for the ride, and to my enjoyment, the weather was PERFECT for training, still a little fresh. BUT NO rain!!!!

Getting off the bike and running was so easy compared to the previous day with no mishaps whatsoever. The afternoon was a tough session, Saturdays session took a fair bit out of me and the Sunday morning session added to it. So off to the pool I went to try and get a solid swim set in. After a 4.8k set I dragged myself out of the pool for one more run before I headed back to Melbourne.

Ballarat was the perfect place to get away for a Training weekend and a place that I will definitely head back to in the future.

Now for the hiccup:

With training in the cold, I caught the flu, not knowing the full extent of it, I rode Tuesday morning in the cold. This did me no favours....A few days off work to recover.

So this weekend I have had a constructive weekends training without the fear of staying sick. 2 runs, 1 ride and a swim, no intensity, just k's have made me quite chuffed here on Sunday evening. Although having the flu, I am happy with how my progress is coming along with my swimming and running.

My first race this season in Yeppoon in 5 weeks has my motivation very high and my enthusiasm is sky high also as one of my good mates, James Monahan is currently competing at Ironman Switzerland. Is on the bike as i blog. My thoughts and encouragement go out to him as going through the training and the highs and lows of this game, getting to the start line is an achievement in it self. Carve it up MONAS!!!!

Anyway, I aim to put a solid week in again this week as I am going under the knife for a minor operation in the near future to resolve a stomach issue. This should not derail my training nor Yeppoon, yet see me make gains once fully recovered.

For now...

X-Man