Hill training, no where to hide

Just back from a great weekends training in Bright with my Hawaii, France and Cairns training buddies.

I suspected I would be given some strong indications of where my form is at 21weeks out from Hawaii over this weekend, and I wasn’t disappointed. That and taking myself out of my normal environment to get some training done was a great move.                 

Its like breaking a cycle and starting with a clean slate. I had new courses and awesome scenery and some very motivated athletes on camp with me.                                        

With a long 160km ride including 2800m of vertical ascent scheduled for Saturday, I revisited a DVD favourite, the Lance’s Road to Paris video, where he rides as a lonely silhouette up a snow blanketed climb in preparation for the 2001 TDF. That’s what it takes to win the tour, says Johan Brunyneel (US Postal team manager) as Lance rides back down to do another 10km repeat. That stuff is Gold, the night before you do a big solid ride. 

Saturday morning arrived with favorable partly cloudy weather, and bitter cold. The early climb over Tawonga Gap caused no problems on fresh legs, and felt pretty confident as I headed to Mt Beauty.

Once there, I proceeded to climb 13k towards Falls Creek and was feeling great. There were the high peaks of Falls Creek looming up above, it was majestic climbing scenery. Back through Mt Beauty and back over Tawonga Gap, the climb is actually steeper coming from this side, but I felt better as I was nice and warmed up.

This day will be a piece of cake I thought, I’m back!

Hit Bright on the way back, fuelled up in town, confident to tackle the 22k Mt Buffalo climb to the chalet. I knew in the back of my mind that the test really hadn’t started, the sustained nature of this climb would be tougher up Buffalo.

As we started this ascent, I rode away from my mates but I was in my lowest gear very early in the climb. I admit I was slightly under geared with my equipment, but should have been feeling better at this early point of the 22k climb.

As I progressed it got inordinately harder, and I started as always to do a self check to see work out why I was struggling, was it I was under hydrated, or underdone with carbs.

With that in mind, I stopped and refilled up my bidon at a natural stream, and kept on going. I don’t often have these moments at struggle town like this, so when I have moment, I can have a moment!

I restarted with a full bidon, but from this point I was really started to struggle with some distant thoughts of not making it to the top. The nose was running like a tap, and my cadence was quite slow as I lurched from pedal stroke to pedal stroke. Funnily enough I was thinking about all those sprinters in the tour who suffer over the mountains in the group known as the AutoBus. They aren’t climbers, they suffer but they get over the high peaks and DO IT!

I stopped and took on a gel just to be topped up with fuel, and as I did my training buddy Kristy came past, smiling, she always smiles you know.

My negative thoughts suddenly vanish. If Kristy can smile as she rides past, then I have to keep going.

As I rode on, the realization hit me that I was simply are out of condition, no 2buts about it. Ah, the big hill dishes out another bitter truthful lesson, but its something that I needed to learn.

Getting moving again and snow started to appear on the side of the road! I became fixated in watching it as it became more and more the higher i climbed, anything to take the focus away from the climb. Vapour was also punctuating my shallow breathes,  strangely keeping me entertained as I pushed onward. I was as much trying to pass a mental vs. a physical test, and that seemed to steel my resolve, that and knowing Kristy was ahead. What doesn’t break you can only make you stronger!.

Finally after what felt like an eternity of climbing, the road up ahead seemed to crest and I started to go slightly downhill, thank God. After a long climb, finally some respite, and we rode on a couple more kms to the chalet and pitted for a rest, and to wait for Jo.

What a great lesson in so many ways, climbing Mt Buffalo for the first time, a real reality check. The 30k of so back to Bright was a lot easier, and went flying by.

We had a great rest of the weekend, with a run off the bike upon getting back which I felt awesome in, and then a great long run on the Sunday morning.

The Bright camp was a well worthwhile experience.

It’s hard to get a truthful gauge on your progress when you train on smaller climbs, or sucking a wheel on

Beach Rd.

Climbs and riding like that tell you no lies, but only simply truths about yourself. If you can pass the test when it gets tough mentally, I feel it steels your resolve, it did for me.

I have come back to Melbourne with a lot more motivation and drive to hit this campaign for Hawaii Ironman 2011 hard with some great experiences on the weekend whilst taking in some beautiful scenery.

I cannot wait to do it again sometime.

Foz