Updates, TdF and the Ironbunch

The two weeks of stress are finished. I was getting ready for my final exams and I had a “moderate” week in the middle. And plenty at work. The results? I think I ticked all the boxes in rather good shape. The exams will be on an 80 to 90 % (I think); the work stuff is back to semi-normality and training I missed only one session.

The ironbunch is the group of my training buddies who are doing IM next march, they run a group ride at the civilized hour of 8am on the Sundays. And I join them every now and then. The last time was Sunday a week ago, in a horribly wet Auckland winter day. I started my thing after 6am and was at their meeting place by 8.15. It followed with a flat 15km into their ride (by now I was over 3 hours). I decided to peel off at one intersection, and head back to the city. The rest of their circuit was great training, but I had no more spare tubes and no much food.

10 minutes before the city I got another flat. Although I didn’t panic, I was quite unhappy about the prospect of calling Nat to pick me up. I decided to inflate and ride, and then inflate and ride and then inflate and ride until I got to a bike shop 5km up the road. The strategy worked quite well, the only problem was that the shop was closed. Lucky for me, another training mate was just stopped at the lights, and I got a free tube to keep going. When I finished it was 6.15 hours and 5.40 of riding.

I’ve also finished the first block of base prep. for IM, a total of 36 hours of cycling (‘bout 900km) 13 hours of running (close to 150km) and 11 hours (28km) of swimming spread in 3 weeks. The body is OK but I am in serious need of stretching and core stuff… next big thing is to get a membership for a gym running back.

And the TdF is finally here!, only a week to go and a month of joy… pity I don’t have satellite TV to see the full stages.

Ciao!