I got my bike ready last night. I filled my bottles. I got my food sorted for the ride. Even got my clothes lined out. Organised to meet my riding partner at 10am. All of this in order to allow a long, luxurious and glorious sleep in. Yet here I am, at 06:30am. Wide awake.
Screw you world!
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| On the road to Baw Baw |
It's never any fun when things don't go to plan.
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| If you can chat whilst going up Baw Baw you know that you have ample gearing, and, something ain't right... |
I had a shocker last weekend at Baw Baw when I woke up from the deepest, and most intense sleep I've had in a while.... at 03:30AM. Not good! Double not good! Still had an ace time on what is just such an awesome course. And thankfully Ben Dyball who was crashing with me from Sydney came home in 2nd so we still had some pocketmoney to add to the bank.
But that's all short term stuff. I am looking at the medium term plan here. And it looks exciting:
1) Tour of Japan
2) AIS Training Camp
3) Tour de Qinghai Lake National Team
4) Tour of Borneo
1) My first big race with the team for the year. Can't wait. Did it last year, it hurt. I wanted to cry. Multiple times. Yet again, this feast of agony and anguish should deliver some good life experiences and I can't wait to go and chase some results with my Huon-Genesys team mates who've started the year off very well..
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| (c) The Wheeler http://thewheeler.com.au/ Nathan Elliot and I chopping off during a Northern Combine race |
3) Tour de Qinghai lake, well I written about it before, so have a read, I promise you'll laugh, or just sigh at all the pretty pictures
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| (c) The Wheeler http://thewheeler.com.au/ I attacked Nath, and we had a two man TT against each other, he caught back up but there was no sprint due to an earlier crash. So equal first it was for both of us at the first Northern Combine race of the year |
4) Tour of Borneo. This was a late surprise. I was initially down to open my serious racing account for the season at the Battle on the Border in a couple of weeks but two of the teams upcoming Asian races (Tour of Borneo and Jelajah Malaysia) both had changes of dates. So with some re-jigging it was decided to let me save my bickies for Japan and Qinghai and then jump into Tour of Borneo which now comes in August. To say that this excites me is an understatement. I'm just hoping that everything goes to plan and this stays the case. One thing I learnt last year, however, is that within a busy season there are that many crashes, changes of race dates, people getting sick, etc etc that nothing ever goes exactly to plan. So I'll just play it by ear then!
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| I've been getting back to good old fashioned climbing weight, unlike, err, other times... |
For the meantime, it's off to Mt Macedon to show some more roads to Jurgen . Yep, I too am a bit shocked that 3rd place getter from Tour of Flanders is now basing his build up to the Tour de France from Melbourne... but I think I understand.
You see he lives upstairs from his fathers bakery. The smell and consumption of fresh baked treats just doesn't seem compatible with his target race weight for the Tour. So Melbourne it is...
So if you spot someone decked out in full Lotto-Bellisol kit around Melbourne, give them a yell! But don't shake his right hand, he still has one big arse filthy blister from Paris-Roubaix.. looks like he tried to high five a screw driver... just another reminder that these buggers are tough.
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| Snowy times up Donna with GPLama should leave me well prepped for Canberra |
But mind you, I reckon two weeks in Canberran winter is even tougher... we'll just have to find out.
Ciao!
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