I promised just the facts and up till today that was looking pretty boring. After a few weeks of sun it’s a far more British grey skies and rainy period. So 2 cancellations for this mornings ride as they might get wet. Three of us still went out though and the riding inland to the north was going well. A couple of high volume running days had left my legs feeling pretty shattered, but an hour into the ride and things started to pick up.
The route we’d taken was a nice hilly circuit with some decent bumps to negotiate. I’ll be heading that way again next week and taking an alternate big loop that promises 5 or 6 hours of riding. Back to today’s ride and conditions were actually pretty good, no rain to speak of just a bit damp. Rolling into a roundabout at high speed and suddenly I’m sliding! Five or six foot later and I stop at the kerb.
First thing I do is check my clothes, having slid out or crashed 4 or 5 times now I’m fed up ruining good clothes! Slight, small tear to the Assos shorts and a rip in the arm warmers too. Bit annoying but they can be patched and saved my skin taking more damage. Bit shaken, but back on the bike and riding along notice that the rear derailleur hanger is a little bent, so it looks like it’s small cogs all the way home! Irritatingly that was a replacement hanger changed only a matter of a month ago at the Worlds.
We rode back on the flat fortunately as without my easy gears hills would have been a real slog. By the time we’d reach Surfer’s the skies had opened up a fair bit and now we were really getting wet. Worst things with the rain on the beach front is all the sand and salt that comes up in it, the bikes get covered. The rain running down your face and into your eyes is pretty salty too which adds a nice sting to it.
All I was thinking about though was the coffee stop that wasn’t too far away. By the time we’d reached there the rain had stopped as had my plans to add on another 2 hours riding after this. I’ve yet to ride over 4.5 hours out here and I feel it’s time to get some long rides in. Not today though, my grazed hip and elbow were a little sore and needed attention and with the bike knocked about I didn’t fancy riding it too far. Still coffee and a chat was essential and it gave an opportunity to check the wounds under my clothes. My right hip looked a bit like raw meat!
After coffee it looked like I was sorted for transport to Port Half-Ironman and should be sharing somewhere to stay down there too, so that’s all good. We stopped off at the local Tri shop, Gold Coast Triathlete to get my bike looked at. They were great as usual and within about 15 minutes the mechanic had straightened out my rear mech and tightened up my brakes (apparently the back one was close to falling off!) Cruised home at this point with the excitement of scrubbing the wounds in the shower to look forward to.
I’ll spare the details, but I’ve come out of crashes worse than this. The scrubbing wasn’t painful, the wounds cleaned up fine and all will be well within the week I expect. My training plans are a little aborted for today and tomorrow a bit. I’ll not be swimming today for sure and I’l make a call on how the wounds look tomorrow. Don’t really want to take many risks of infecting them, even if it hampers the 100k October challenge. Tomorrow’s run race could be interesting as my swollen hip will make that leg sore. Still these things happen and fortunately not too frequently. I’ll be taking in the bike for a proper service in the next few weeks, the mechanic advised it and thinking about it it’s been about 4000km since its last one.
Other than this? Well as I mentioned lots of running, nearly 4 hours in the past 2 days! But feeling pretty good for it, if I don’t try and push the pace I can do quite a lot of running. I did a long run from here, down to Miami beach and up to Surfer’s Paradise. I’m keen to extend my long runs if only to get that little bit further up the coastline, I wonder how far I can get and back in the time. My limit is around 2.5 hours though, but maybe later I’ll push that to 3 and see if I can get up towards The Spit. My crash today breaks the run off every bike rule unfortunately, but I’ll let this one go I think. Back to normal next week.
Well those were the facts, that’s it for now. Next time how I went at the 10K and anything else that happened on the way. Hopefully less ‘exciting’ than today’s events.
