Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Filling the gap- part 2

So, after a week of unpacking and re packing and organising ( combined with only an 11 hour training week to help me unload + freshen) Saturday 16th July rolled around and I was heading off to the USA and warmer climes. Travel was relatively un stressful despite EVERY single flight was delayed in some shape or form. Thus, landed in San Fransisco 90 minutes later than anticipated which turned out to be a bonus as there was NO queue to get through US immigration ( previous visits to SF have always included a wait of an hour or more to clear immigration as lots of international flights seem to arrive at the same time) so I cleared there pretty quickly and thanks to being a koru member, my bike and bag appeared almost immediately so off I trundled to the domestic terminal to check in for flight to Denver. *** I refuse to fly Air New Zealand's Star alliance partner, United airlines as have had several encounters with their ground staff who seem to decide on the spot, according to mood, how much to extort for bike carriage and excess weight.****

So had chosen to flyfrontier airlines who I must commend - $20 for each of my bags; with the very pleasant check in lad overlooking the fact my bike was 3lb over the 50lb limit! This flight was delayed however, so had to spend 3 hours sifting around. Thank god for free wireless!

Fresno. Its a dog's life

Finally arrived in Denver at 8pm, entertained by all the forked lightening I could see out the window:))
Andy, who's home I would be living in for the next 16 days ( thanks to the help of Boulder tri club who put me in touch with their members ) kindly picked me up from the airport and we drove home to Broomfield, which is about 20 km SE of Boulder but still in Boulder county.

The Tobemeister
The family (wife Erin who is from NZ, Cameron 12, Emily 11 and Makenna 9 plus Fresno(dog) + Toby ( cat)) were most hospitable and I had a thoroughly enjoyable and stress free stay and can't thank them enough for their generosity,

So, 10 days to acclimitise to the heat and the altitude before EC women's camp  began and time to get some solid work done away from the constraints of winter, work, earthquakes etc.

Found my way around and thanks to Andy, had a free 2 week pass to 24 hour fitness who had a 3 lane lap pool that was always quiet  and preferable to the local rec centre where the lane swimming was limited and the water was waaaaay too warm for decent swim workouts! Followed coach's orders and stayed "low" ( well, 5430 feet ) so rode a loop that took me round Louisville then up past Boulder reservoir and along the road towards Lyons then turning off through some rolling farmlands and back to Broomfield. I was delighted to find an excellent coffee shop in a small place called Niwot, along that road.

Anyway, before I digress into tedious descriptions of daily workouts/coffee stops. I will sign off from this post.... next exciting installment shall be a report of the camp.



Mmmm latte, pumpkin bread +almond butter.Food of champions

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Filling in the gaps....part1

Aaaaagh ......despite the best of intentions yet again, it has been ages since my last blog post. I must aim to keep the blogs a little shorter but more frequent - consistency is the key, right??  As with all things training.

Anyway, to fill in since my last post I was getting back into some good training again before the weather really turned to pants; my focus being on rebuilding some strength in the gym and in the pool  plenty aerobic steady state sessions. With no locum jobs in Edinburgh on the horizon I was at a bit of a loss as to how to structure the months leading up to IM Canada. I wasn't too comfortable with the idea of just not working for 4 months given that earthquakes and recession had affected our business quite a bit.

So, I took a locum job down in Invercargill  for 5 weeks. I left at Queens birthday weekend and split the journey up by spending a night in Dunedin, which was great as gave me the chance to catch up with Helen while there. Next day i drove the 200km to Invercargill and managed to find the house I was to live in relatively easily. I didn't have a key or a contact number of the person that would be there but luckily Hannah was home. I was somewhat alarmed when she answered the door though and I could see her breath in the hallway!! Oh ****** another freezing, damp kiwi house. I was assured that the house had coal fired central heating and was usually warm but they had missed the coal delivery on Friday and wouldnt have any until the following day.
Anyhow, the house was pretty warm ( especially my room which had 2 radiators and was above the boiler!!) and the 4 twenty somethings that live there were all great people. 2 lawyers ( Kathryn and Charlie) Hannah ( who was the pa of one of the practice owners) and Simon ( who worked for Venture Southland).

The practice I was working in , Reekie+Harris, was a long established practice in central Invercargill. I was covering for Alistair (Reekie) who had had back surgery and was unable to be back at work til the surgeon gave the OK. I had chosen to work only 4 days with the intention that having an extra day midweek to get a decent ride in should the weather turn to pants at the weekend - and also so that I wasn't doing all my rides on the wind trainer.

I thoroughly enjoyed it there; totally different type of clientele from Linwood ( I saw only one beneficiary the entire 5 weeks of working there!!) and the staff were great too. The equipment was pretty old - no fibre optics or ultrasonic scalers etc and I found that a little frustrating at times but hey, nothing's perfect?!!

So rather than waffling on ( as am wont to do.......and struggling with brevity...) I've listed highlights+lowlights of my placement in Invercargill:-

Highlights:-

Living approx 500m from Splash Palace aquatic centre ( 50m pool).

Masters sessions at said pool were excellent (5.30am starts!) coach gave plenty tech feedback and Monday morning sessions were a big redline/hammerfest for me to keep up. Great!!

Being within walking distance of everything-10 min walk to work, to the supermarket, town, pool

Locals in the Catlins
Found new roads to ride on that were pretty quiet traffic wise and some very scenic.Refreshing to not be looking at the same tarmac!

Still able to get a decent coffee ( Rain espresso round the corner from work, Zookeepers cafe)

Despite being a smaller place, Invercargill has excellent facilities  funded for mostly by the Invercargill licensing trust. This means you can't buy wine or beer in the supermarket. Didnt bother me too much though :)

Mrs Clarks cafe in Riverton. Yummy date scone, great coffee.

Next stop Antarctica...!!
Being blown to bits and horizontal rain then getting shelter running in and out of all the tracks on Bluff Hill.

Sandy Point running tracks. My favourite place to run, followed by a coffee by the fire at ziffs.

No earthquakes or aftershocks or piles of bricks/rubble/road craters/orange cones

I was lucky with the weather while I was there. Pretty freezing and a few windy wet days but I left before the real winter snap hit, which no doubt would have affected my training.

Southland tri club 's winter duathlon at Teretonga raceway. Fun blow out the cobwebs on a Sunday morning and a friendly bunch of people. They seem to have a pretty active tri + multisport club there and the subs to join and race entries are very reasonable. Lots of events on the spring/summer race calendar there which would make it a great training spot....you also get more daylight!!

Was not too windy during my rides.

Lowlights:-

Rain was only open Mon-Fri !    

No wireless internet at home so I had to get a Vodem stick from Vodafone. Crap, overpriced and slow and seems to have made any current wireless connections on my laptop rather erratic.We dont get free wireless at Starbucks in NZ.

Alberto got very dirty with all the winter riding!

Lack of decent hills in Invercargill itself. Plenty rollers if you head inland or toward the Catlins and gentle rollers on the coastal route.

The looooooong drive home - 7 hours behind the wheel.

I think it could blow like buggery in Spring and summer - when you ride the Tuatapere road, the trees are all bent by the prevailing SW wind.


So after a fruitful 5 weeks on the work and training front (little else for me to do really!!!) I headed back to Chch for a week before departing for my USA/Canada trip. Next exciting installment will be from Boulder, Colorado.