Gorillas in the Mist (with apologies to the gorillas)

Today as part of training with Nikki and Steve it was to be 5 laps of Mount Coot-tha. I say was to be as we ended up with nearly as many flat tyres as we did laps. Nikki is off next week for the Womens tour of New Zealand and was after that one last hit out. It had been raining overnight here in Brisbane so it was guite foggy and almost like riding in some of the old footage of riding in the Tour through the fog and rain.

This was the best I could with manage my dodgy camera phone sorry ;o)

And yes I was at the back collecting the tickets for the autobus. After getting the third flat for the morning and quickly running out of tubes we decided 3 laps would have to do with maybe some more this afternoon. Both Nikki and Steve are riding strongly and its great to see the hard work they have put in really starting to pay off. Once Nikki realises how strong she is the world will be her oyster.

TRE-X Long Course

Due to the just about complete lack of Adventure Racing in SEQ this year I have found it necessary to branch out and look around for other activities (other than marathons/ultras) to keep me training hard. To that end I have spent most of the last couple of months training for the TRE-X Off road triathlons. I still do 'normal' triathlons however the TRE-X involve a dam swim, mountain bike and trail run. The Long Course race was 350/20/4 x 2 i.e we did everything twice.

As those of you who live in Brisbane would know we have not had a great deal of rain lately, however, overnight we had some fairly decent falls. So a mountain bike track that would have been hardpacked and quick turned in to a bit of a quagmire and very slick. I didn't have the benefit of pre-riding the course which was a mistake as I was only starting to get the course dialed on the 3rd and 4th laps. I also had some serious chain suck (anyone with suggestions how to stop this on a GF Cake let me know...) and had to middle ring some climbs when I would have liked to give the legs a rest for the 4 k trail run.

Picture of the drive train post race

Anyway it was great day out even though both bikes were filthy and I had to think about drivetrain wear at the moment. The highlight was seeing my wife on the bike course and then finishing just behind her. She has really embraced triathlon and is making great strides forward (excuse the pun) which makes me very proud of her.



The day is really well run by In2Adventure who are running the next event on 8th March at Slickers in Kurwongbah.

Even better on the Saturday they are running a whole heap of events including a 40XC race, Trail running and dirt crits. See here for more info. I'm not sponsored by these people in anyway, however, Simon and Robyn who own the company are 2 of the most genuine people you would ever meet and always interested in feedback and suggestions how they can improve the product.