Injury update...

I thought I should give an update on my condition etc. Basically racing is out for a while. I am under the care of Olympic Park Sports Medical Centre. This is going to give me the best chance of being OK to ride the worlds. I am going in for an MRI Friday afternoon, and will get results Monday night. With this I will have a very clear picture of the damage and a better idea of my recovery process. I am seeing the physio twice a week at the moment and the pain is under control, but movement is still restricted.

My limited movement obviously keeps me of the road and trails. But I am doing some riding on the dreaded wind trainer, spending much of my time sitting upright. My coach has set a great program, we are going week to week at the moment so we can monitor my recovery process and train to suit.

Joining the gym for some leg strength work was always on the card. I joined yesterday. It has never be part of my riding in the past, but am willing to give it a go.

On a racing note, I have entered Tour de Timor. I did this the day I was hit. I though, I'll be right. So fingers crossed hey. I am riding with Randall and Andy Fellows in my team.

Lost against car...

I went out for an easy spin on Friday morning, it was cold but clear. I was only 10 minutes from home, when a car waiting at a give way pulled out right into me. Luckily, my courier instincts kicked in. I was directly in front of her when I heard the rev of the engine, I tried everything to get out of the way, I sprinted and moved into the middle of the road. Basically, these actions reduced the severity of my injuries. I got my legs out of the way, leaving the rear of the bike to take the impact. This flicked me over the bars, landing on my back, left shoulder first. So my shoulder (still undiagnosed) is very sore and my right thumb very bruised. I see myself as very luck, but guess what the driver said, "sorry I didn't see you". Very poor excuse. There was nothing impeding her view, I was wearing a standout, white Look kit and hey, I'm not exactly small.

My poor bike didn't fair so well. Barely a month old and written off. Boo.

It's back to the doctors today to see if we can figure out what is happening to my shoulder. There was little to no improvement over the weekend with complete rest (thanks to Robyn for looking after everything). I have cancelled my plans to race the Merida 24 hour next month, but hopefully I am back riding within a few weeks.

Mawson Marathon...

What a race. I had no idea what to expect from myself at this one. I
knew the distance would be ok, but was a little worried about the pace
I would need to maintain to hold onto the quick boys. We (Jason and I)
made the tactical decision to let Chis and Brett go off the front
early on. The pace they were sitting on seemed a little quick for suck
a long race. We sat up and waited for the Torq boys (Fenner and Mark
T) so we could use them to our advantage on the long road streaches.
This seemed to work well, 4 man team time trial style. Little did we
know Brett and Chris had swapped to bikes setup for time trialing. All
out efforts were no match. Their lead went out to about 20 minutes by
about the half way mark. Buy this stage we had left the Torq boys,
they were both have very slight bad patches, which they rode through
and avoided loosing anymore time.

We tried as hard as we could, but any time we made up on Brett and
Chris didn't seem to last. Jason pulled me along nicely towards the
end as we thought an attact was coming from behind. In the end we were
2nd, in a bit over 14hrs for the 367kms, about 15mins behind Brett and
Chris and about 7 mins up on team Torq in third.

Logistically it was one of the toughest races I have competed it. But
every time I got to the end of my bidon, there was Randall with a
fresh one. He never missed a beat and we could not have done it
without him. Thanks Ben. Also, thanks to Jason. We normally race
against each other and it was a pleasant change to have him on my
side. We seemed to work well together on this very challenging course
for differant reasons than both of use are used to.

I will add photos soon, we are still travelling home.

Traveling done, let's race

We smashed out 1000km yesterday, only a few 100 today and we will be
in Blinman ready for race start tomorrow at 7:30am.

This pic is of Wilpena Pound. A very beautiful part of Australia.

What mud?

You would never have guessed these shoes raced 5hrs in the mud yesterday . A trick from Randall's vault, " give'em a spin in the washing machine". Good as new.

CTS Round 1 - 5hrs

With a sell out field and no rain in the sky, today's race was always going to be fun. Snoz and FGP have got organising these events down to a fine art. The course was carefully pick to make sure the park wasn't destroyed with all the rain we had during the week. Yet it wasn't boring. There was only a few bog patches and the majority of the single track was tacky and very fast.

My legs were a tad smashed from a fairly intese training week and my lungs are recovering from a bout of the flu. But I didn't let this deter me from having a good ride. I couldn't match the front runners for the first few laps but then I got into a grove and moved through the field. I rode a lap with Mark Fenner, but decided we were moving a little quick for where I wanted to be, so I dropped back. Happy with this decission, I rolled around quite happy in forth. Then, coming
into the finish of my second last lap, I saw Fenner as he pulled the pin at the end of that lap. This got me on the podium for third, 18 minutes behind AJ in first. Overall and good day in the saddle. Only another week of training before I head over to SA for the Mawson Marathon with Jason English.

Day two....

Today's stage went very well. Robin pulled the pin at about 10, so I
was able to get a bit of sleep. When I started riding the legs felt
great. I punched out another 10 laps, only about 5 mins slower than
yesterday. I held them pretty consistant and the body held up very
well. The course here was great. Plenty of fun flowing sections.
Overall the event was very well run, the atmosphere was good and there
was lots of fun had by all.

Half way....

The 12hr ends up being a 6+6 ( I get to have the middle 12hrs off), I
got a good start but it wasn't until about the 2hr mark that I got
into a rythem, then bang, I blow out my rear tyre. I did a quick
repair and got going again. I was able to keep my laps very
consistant, only really loosing time when I need to put lights on etc.
I finished up a lap and a bit up on other solos and leading the 12hr
overall. There was 3000 vertical meters climbed in my 10 laps, so I
think the plan is to get some sleep (although I want to give some
support to Robin Tullett, an old triathlon freind also flying the Kona
flag in the solo 24) and I will take the mornings ride a little easier.

Ty has been busy talking with people about the new magic link bikes.
They seem to be getting a lot of attention. Unfortunatly, Ty lost his
own personal one off the back of the trailer on the trip over, he
wasn't very happy about it. I don't think he wanted it back after it
would have hit the road doing 110kmh.

Update...

I know, I know, I have been pretty slack with updates lately. But believe me, I have been keeping myself busy as. I am now officially fully recovered from the two National Chap events (24hr and Marathon) and have sat down with Simon (the coach), to work out what needs to be done between now and the Worlds in October. The good news is there is plenty of time to get my strength up to a level where I should be competing at the front end of the race. The National 24hr was a little set back, but it did show me I have the speed, I just need to get it all together and I should be alright.

I was planning on racing the Kona Dirty Weekend in the 24hr solo category, but have really struggled to get either the kids baby sat or figure out a way to have them all travel with us (I won't do a 24hr solo without Robyn there to help). It would have been nice to simply ride the whole 24 hours comfortably and try a few new things I want to implement into my racing. Instead I will be racing the 12hr as part of the same event(2pm - 2am). I haven't raced a 12hr in a long time, so it should be a lot of fun.

A month after this event, it is back to SA for the Kona Mawson Marathon. This will really be a very unique event in so many ways. I have yet to work out the full details on how we will manage to have a support 4wd with us thought the entire race, but I can now let you know I will be riding the 380km with Jason English. Together we should be able to smash out a fasted paced ride and with any luck there will be some other strong teams entered to keep things interesting.

In other news, I finished building a new roadie over the weekend. So the old one is being cleaned up, fitted with new bar tape and a few other bits and pieces and sold off. So if you know anyone after a sweet road bike going cheep, let me know. Pictures can be seen over HERE. The new bike will go for it's first ride tonight. Hopefully I can do it justice over the winter months.

On a work related note, I finally have my website live (thanks to Rohin). You can check it out over HERE. We still have a few bugs to iron out, but at least I now have something to direct potential clients to.

The aftermath

Well that's racing. I was looking good up until 2am, sitting in fourth hunting third. Then bang, no drive left. I rolled around till 4am. Then decided to cut my losses and call it quits. This would give me a much faster recovery.

We will sit down this week and see where things went wrong. Some things went great, so once again I have learned something.

5 Hours In

Top 5 all within 2 minutes, Andy in 3rd and everything going well.

Nats, ready to go...

I made it here in good time. Got things all set up and rode 2 laps of the course. Transition is set up a little different this year, with double the riders of previous years, no pit tents will be anywhere near the feed zone. This doesn't affect riders, but supporters need to make the journey back and forth every half hour or so.

The course was lots of fun... it runs in an opposite direction to any of the races I have done here, but it flows nicely. I rode my 120, SRAM gave me some 2011 120mm SIDS, first impressions, bloody fantastic. They soak up the bumps like nothing else. I will be happy lapping on that and the Hei Hei 100.