Week 1 re-cap

Week 1 of the training programme has been and gone. There's something quite familiar yet different about the routine though! I guess I kind of know what to expect this time around. And some days it's easier than others to head out for that scheduled ride. Luckily, the weather played ball for most of last week as well :)

Last week was a "moderate" week, with 11 hours of riding all up - around 10 hours of which were on the road, 15 minutes (or so) on the track, and a mere 50 minutes on the mountainbike. Yup, I'd been expecting to be getting reacquainted with my road bike, and I sure spent a lot of time sitting on that roadie saddle!

One thing I'd forgotten about training was how constantly HUNGRY I get! By Saturday, I was feeling like the Very Hungry Caterpillar! I had got home from a 3 hour road ride (what a lovely day for it too!), and felt like I was continually eating all afternoon and evening... but I was still hungry! I don't recall all of what I ate, but it ended with a homemade pizza for dinner, followed by some potato chips and onion dip on the couch with Scotty while watching Ironman on DVD (good movie by the way..).

Three main highlights from last week. The first was the evening at the velodrome on Tuesday night! I wasn't too sure if I'd make it out on a track bike so decided to do my scheduled 1h:30m ride beforehand (mostly into a headwind..urgh! poor route selection Celia!). But luckily, I got a loaner track bike from the shed and after a few wobbly laps, I felt like I was whizzing around the velodrome! Gosh that was so much fun! Not too sure how much track riding I'll get in this year, but it's something I'd definitely like to give a proper go at at some stage :)

The second highlight was the hill repeats on Wednesday. Four times up Happy Valley Rd (around a 15 minute hill climb) at 60rpm. Into a headwind. Now why on earth was this a highlight?! Well, because of the familiarity from last season's training (although I only had to do three hill repeats last year..), and the fact that as I was riding up it, it really made me feel like I had progressed from when I first started a programme last year. Although the hill repeats were hard, I knew what to expect and it wasn't as bad as I remembered it to be. Although perhaps this could be misconstrued as the fact that I wasn't going hard enough, but my legs were pretty shattered by the end. And I was super-hungry for the rest of that day!

The last highlight was the skills course I organised on Sunday on behalf of the Makara Peak Supporters for the Wellington City Council's Push Play Outdoor Festival. I'd been taking registrations for this event for the past few weeks and by Friday, I had decided to set a cut-off at 30 people. Sunday morning rolled around and the rain from the night before was still lingering early in the morning. But there were patches of blue sky out there so I decided that it was going to clear up (luckily it did) and that there was no point in cancelling. By 10am (the start time), the Makara Peak carpark was full of people on bikes. I had roughly grouped the 30-odd registrees (is that even a word?) into three groups, and, along with my lovely team of volunteers (Scotty, Paula, Ashley, Nigel, Cam, Shane + a couple of parent helpers), we took our respective groups out on the trails and taught some basic mountainbiking skills. It was such a rewarding experience, and I really do love doing stuff like this. Plus I got to ride my mountainbike - ah, what a great way to end the training week :)