Thursday 17 July 2008

Winnings, Goals, and TTs

CSV sent out my winners jersey this week for 1st place in M1/2 for the Pinnacle Series '07/'08. I'd accumulated enough points through consistency than anything else. The jersey also lists Mt Buffalo rather than Hotham. Hotham monsters over Buffalo!

I now have the rest of the years racing planned out, for major events anyway. Hawthorn Club Champs, Mt William, Doherty Tour, Tour of Bright, etc. I've done a fair amount of climbing in the last few weeks that has given me some baseline power data to work with from here on in. I've made some good progress in only the last three weeks on my w/kg numbers so it will be interesting to see the results this brings when I'm hanging off the side of a mountain somewhere next.

This Sunday I'm 1/4th of the Hawthorn masters team time trial at the state titles in Miners Rest. The Zipp disc is finally glued and working well, and Limar have an AU/NZ certified TT helmet which is the latest edition to my bike bling collection. While I've not been out as much as I'd like on the TT bike, my threshold work in recent weeks should get me through the 32kms with a good turn of speed. Next month I've got the state titles for ITT and road. I'm not that focused on the road race this early on but I'll give the ITT one hell of a crack.

Other Misc stuff:

The Presets = Good climbing music. Sydney based techno duo. Watch for the lyrics about dingoes and babies, it had me laughing at threshold up Mt Buffalo two weeks ago!

I watched a doco on Lori-Ann Muenzer yesterday, she's an Olympic gold medallist track cyclist from Canada. Worth a watch if you're into training and competing in cycling and can understand the pressure/pain/struggle that an athlete goes through on a daily basis. So maybe we're not all at world level, but to improve you have to have some kind of structure/support/goals/etc. This isn't a fairytale of hard work and first places - but more of a real account of the lifestyle and sacrifices Lori-Ann chooses. The underlying lesson I took away from this was how important the support base around you is on performance. YouTube Promo Link

Cadel's TDF performance to date has been impressive. But we're still only 1/2 way home. Fingers crossed they can hand over yellow in the next few days to take the pressure off Lotto, then for him to regain it in the TT!

1 comment:

Groover said...

See you in Bright in December! Just starting to train for that, too.

Will also check out The Presets - always keen to put some new training music on my iPod.

Envy you for being able to train around Bright!