Cyclus Interruptus

The last fortnight has been pretty disjointed. Between 2 days working taking snow samples, 3 days out driving to QLD and flying home, plus trying to get back into the swing of things with the course, it has been 11 days between rides.

While it's not good for the km count, I'm not beating myself up about it - well, maybe a little bit.

Exercise hasn't been a complete flop. The snow sampling involves a 11km return walk, uphill, along a supposedly groomed trail. Notice I said supposedly?

The first mission was pretty straightforward. Took a mate (Ports) up with me for the day, we sailed up the cat track, groomed, hard packed, got the heart rate up nicely, 1:05 walk to the sampling site. No problemo. Collect samples, coast down the hill, homeward bound.

The second mission was significantly harder. Fresh snow, track not groomed, the track is exposed to the west, and being cut in to the side of the mountain, collects all the windblown snow. 11cm of fresh snow translates to 50cm of soft snow, and well over a km of postholing up past my knees. 1 hour walk very quickly became a 2 hour walk.

El Stupido didn't take any snowshoes with him, either. Not owning a set, I hired some for the first sortie. $35 and they didn't even touch the snow. Deciding to be a tightarse, I didn't bother for the second sample. Paid for that one with interest. Will be buying a set me reckons, pretty quickly too.

But enough whinging. Have a look at the photos in the previous post - can't beat working conditions like that.

And got out for a ride today too. Nail Can with a couple of mates. I was riding like a , not helped by finding I'd left my lockout on for the first 10km of singletrack. Grr. Things got a little better after that, but I was not up to my usual (poor) standard. 38km return by the time I got home.

Glancing back through my Polar diary, I was interested to see that in a 3 hour dirt ride today (38km), I burnt the same kJ as a 4 hour road ride with hills. That really puts things in perspective for me - I knew the MTB was more challenging, but hadn't really quantified the gap.

And this probably mollifies me a bit when I get beat up about my km count. I've been guilty of maybe trying to skew my riding towards the road, to get the km up. One might consider this cheating. Although when I set the 100km a week target, it was based on road riding as well.

I'm not writing it off, it's important, any time in the saddle is good, especially if it gets the heart rate up, and helps my technique. But in the end, nothing beats time on dirt.

On the race front, still keen to attempt my first solo effort. After talking to Choppy (sister in law, or sister out law if we're getting technical), she tells me that she's planning to enter her first XC race on the same weekend, in Canberra. So I'm tossing up whether to still go to Castlemaine, or head north instead, and race at Canberra with Chop.

This would however entail being in CNB two weekends running, as we're flying out of there when we head north to Hinchinbrook. The MTB Worlds are at Stromlo the following weekend as well, the plan was to go up for that, and then stay a couple of days until we fly out.

Unsure if we'll be able to get there for the Worlds, found out today that one of our friends is turning 30 that weekend, and it will possibly be her last weekend in ALB, so we'll need to be here for the shennanigans.

Will be entering a team in the Canberra 24 Hour as well (Mens 4), plus hoping to get to ADL in Jan next year, and pre-ride one of the Tour Down Under stages. More news to come.

Alright, been summonsed, time to go...