TRAINING

Week 6 almost complete; second cycle of work - second hard week. DONE =D

After racing on Monday I took an easy afternoon to myself, midterm season over here so had plenty of studying to do. Fluid Mechanics exam went well on Wednesday followed by Materials Engineering on Thursday. Relieved that they are over!

Tuesday had 10x400m's in the pool at 0530, solid 80km on the bike with Denise that afternoon and an hour of core that night

Wednesday had a tempo 13.8km run with my running partner Gordon, a core set from 6-630 and a pool set at 7 [8x100 FC Max on 1.40]. Quick mention about Gordon, been running together now for 2 months, he's helped a lot being my buddy for the long miles and keeping a darn fast pace for almost all of them! He's going for a marathon in 2009 and I'd put some serious money on him breaking 3 hours on his first time out, we're racing together next weekend and I don't fancy my chances, will be a good race.

Thursday - more of the same. Pool at 530am, 12x200m FC building to max, 2 WET hours on the bike that afternoon.

Today was a day and a half. Denise and I had a bike planned from 6-930, UBC to Cypress Mountain and back, pretty good 85km ... when it's sunny. Was essentially a monsoon from the moment we left campus and waterproofs or no waterproofs we got wet. The climb wasn't too bad, got into a nice rhythm and chatted most of the way only pausing to ring the water from our gloves, the decent was a different story. With basically no brakes and 15km of river road to decend the prospect was a little daunting. By the bottom I was frozen solid, the shivering was enough to send my bike back and forth with the shaking...and my left hand had stopped working ... so gear shifts were being done with the right ... on both sides!

Great ride though...enough to toughen me up that little bit more and was good to see a cyclist out enjoying the rain (that was Denise, not me).

Mum and my younger sister Mel arrived in town this afternoon and we drove straight up to Whistler for the weekend, have already spent hours catching up on the last 13 weeks and will be great to have 6 days with them before we part ways again until Christmas.

Looking forward to some more rainy cycles and runs this weekend before my last hard week starts on Monday, good luck to Fraser by the way who's training hard in a much sunnier California for the 70.3 World Championships in Clearwater next month.

Remember: The medals are given in the summer, but won in the winter!

Mike