A testing recovery

After all of the increasing activity mentioned in the last post, I had a chance to actually test whether this was paying off on the weekend – With a 6 hour charity ride around Calder Park Raceway.

The TdH team - I'm the lanky pale one...

I’d actually signed up for this ride (run by Epilepsy Victoria as a bit of a fundraiser & awareness raiser) back in my pre-plague days, and had pretty much written it off as I’d done way too little training for it. But, I was encouraged to reframe it and treat is a bit of training itself – And so I rocked up on Sunday morning, my chunky aluminium commuter looking decidedly out of place amongst the carbon fibre speed machines – and gave it a go.

Actually, it surprised me. The event was nowhere near as hardcore as I feared, and I found myself riding alongside all myriad of riders, as well as being passed by and passing others. Families, young focused kids (who were scarily fast!), teenage girls, and the usual crowd of middle aged lycra. And with that inspiration I was able to knock over about 120km in just under the 6 hours…. I was pretty pleased with that, as I broke my previous personal best (a measly 75km) and the 100km mark. And I even managed to fit in a mid-ride massage (thank heavens for the massage college which had showed up to give free massages!) and a few breaks to rest my burning quads. (The top guy did well over 200km and never got off the bike.... Nutso... but respect)

And even more surprisingly, I’m not that sore now. I expected to be in agony but those massages must have helped and (I hope) my fitness is returning enough to recover quicker. I even managed to show up for circuit training Monday evening (cursed high interval sprints and 23km deadballs….), rode in this morning and jogged today. Woohoo….

Ahh, finished at last.

But most surprisingly, I enjoyed riding in circles for 6 hours.... Never thought I'd see that!