Waddaya know! Training works....

Another 80 K's today on the road bike including some really nice roads out the back of Dayboro. It was great to catch up with Gary as well after my aborted attempt to do the Springbrook ride last weekend. We took in Kobble Creek Road, Armstrong Road and then continued up Mt Mee. We didn't make it all the way up as a fairly major mechanical had Annick sidelined and having to go to just 2 gears. Unfortuneately neither gear was low enough to make the climb up the rest of the way bearable so we turned around and headed home. Even with the broken deraileur we made a very respectable average of 27K per hour. It barely slowed Annick down and she even did the climb back over the Samford Range to finish up!
The upshot of today for me was how I felt following yesterdays ride. It took a while for my body to get used to the idea of riding again today but when it did I felt great. Of course I still hurt in a few places and some of the steep climbs were murder on my legs, but that is expected when the gradient hits 18% and you've ridden about 250k's in the week. All good though. With Nick along again today I didn't feel I held him up. I know he took it easy up Mt Mee but I still had plenty left too. Not that we were racing but you do just know when you are evenly matched on a ride. Maybe evenly matched is not the right way of putting it. It's more that your goals for the ride are the same.
Tomorrow is a ride with Spencer up Camp Mountain and Mt Nebo. I have been looking forward to this for a while as our schedules haven't matched up to fit in a ride for ages. I expect it will hurt quite a bit. Camp Mt is a real heartbreaker and it really only improves marginally up Scrub Road and South Boundary Road. These rides are the guts of my training though. No point training only when you do feel like it because in just a few short weeks it will be a tough ride every day for 7 days. You learn a lot more about yourself when you are tired then when you are fresh. Your mind will tell you it hurts too much, legs will ache and you will want to pack it all in. Thats when you listen to your inner voice and monitor that pain in the legs to make sure you aren't straining something but once you are sure it's not, put it aside. It won't stop you pedalling and you can move through it. Turn the pedals, bike goes forward. Nothing simpler.