Wilson's Adventure Racing, Multisport & Triathlon Sanctuary

A good slogan to live by, and the question that must always be in one's mind... if you truly love your mountain bike.

The transition weeks are tough. Going from recovery mode to full-on training mode again is not the easiest. Especially with a bloody 24-hour MTB race to have a crack at in another week's time!

My running is definitely on the up and up, so i'll have a crack at the time-trial tomorrow morning, then do a circuit of PT to get some of the kayaking endurance back... otherwise will feel really weak once i hit the water agin next week as swim and layak mileage goes up again.

A crap day today, and yet also a good day. My precious MTB will be in the shop till Wednesday evening, waiting for a replacement front-D. The bearings on my pedals are definitely shot to shite. The left one just decided to give way before the right side did. Huge amount of play in them....

Hitting the gym BEFORE a swim session is definitely a good way to slow oneself down in the water! I will be up for a run-kayak tomorrow.

Good quote (seen on some flyer at the 12-hour FGP Enduro): "Have you hugged your mountain bike today?"

Some good news for a change. Ian Methven of Rapid Sensations in Taupo has generously agreed to send me a replacement copy of my Grade 2 MS kayak cert'! I should be getting it in the mail by next week. One more hurdle to Coast to Coast down, i say.

After today's ride with Paul and Co. (where i won 'Stack of the Day' by jumping off the bike while my bike ploughed downhill into a tree), i discovered a crack on the front-D cage when i was in the process of bending it back into place with my SOG. Guess the impact of that stack was too much for the poor old front-D (circa 2004). Later on, i found to my horror, the humugous amount of play in my left pedal. Opened it up, and discovered bits of metal and a bunch of little metal spheres all mixed up in the gunk that was the grease. Destroyed bearing! That pair of Eggbeaters (circa 2003) has been giving me nothing but months of faultless service over thousands of off-road kilometres. About time they threw in the towel.

Tomorrow i am heading down to Spoke(n) to sort out a new front-D and a pedal rebuild kit. I may decide to do a brake re-bleed and complete shifter cable change as well. A pity i only discovered these buggered parts a day after Dad flew into Melbourne.

We just spent 2 hours wrestling with Leonard's rear Hutchinson Python tire... finding holes, patching, trying to get it to inflate, discovering new holes cleaning it, adding new sealant... you get the idea.

There were at least 4 holes in Lenny's tire. 2 of them we had to stick patches on; the other 2 were tiny enough to escape the the naked eye, but big enough for the sealant not to do its job... right up on the sidewall (one was just half a cm from the tire bead). The words 'Swiss cheese' came to my mind as we tackled the tire.

Which leads me into my latest speil on the perils of going tubeless. NEVER, EVER use crap tires! I reckon the new Hutchinson range are pretty crap. I'm still using a pair of the old version, tubeless and have yet to experience sidewall or proximal bead punctures. Scary when i think that there are a bunch of tires out there that Stan's actually discourages users from mounting, due to their poor track record with sealing problems, blow-offs, or plain old weak and leaky beads.

On the cards now are a pair of Maxxis Crosmarks. They look good, and i would appreciate them for some of the more technical stuff coming up at the Scott 24 hour in Canberra in 3 weeks' time.

I may start to do time trials of my runs, just to see how in shape i am. I reckon once a week would be good, fit in as a tempo run of sorts. Also, road rides must get longer, right now, in time for Round the Bay and WA.

Went for a decent run yesterday with Sime, Keitho, and Pete. Jacqui rolled up but had to leave and do a run later, cos there was no way to secure her bike.

By decent, i mean at least 13km, according to the amount of time spent on our feet! Keito reckons we clocked around 15km. A bit too much of a ramp-up for me - given that i am just getting back the mileage again from the buggered right foot tendon - so i'm taking today easy... gym is still on the cards, but i may give it a miss if the bike repair session with Lenny goes into overtime.

Good news: i only need to clock 15-18km more for the remainder of this week. I'll do a reasonably long run of 10km on thursday, then maybe a trail session on the saturday, recovery on sunday. Incorporation of fartlek and speed stuff i can do from tuesday onwards.

And the swimming... or rather lack of it due to nasty injuries. i gotta say my scabbing is progressing pretty well so far. The gruesome loss of skin on my left shoulder is already being replace by a healthy pinkish replacement layer under the lightest scabs. The elbow portion is still pretty crusty and hard, but should come away by sunday. Hopefully, can resume wet activities on Monday.

In the meantime, i'm hiding the damage under lon-sleeved tops and jackets draped over my left arm.

You can do this at an enduro race!

Hell of a rush, i can tell you, especially with Homer strapped to your helmet!

Today's post is about 'experts' and their relationship with snazzy equipment. Or more specifically, people who have the uncanny knack of correlating athletic performance to the number of digits after the dollar sign on the price tag of equpment.

When the opportunity presents itself, such inidividuals will refer to a piece of gear and say something along the lines of, "Oh, i know so-and-so, who uses this-or-that bit of equipment, and he won yada-yada race/clocked yada-yada time/is yada-yada fast". The epitome of such comments usually concern an elite, professional athlete who "uses Brand A" to the tune of race victories or otherwise career success. Implication: Brand A is good, and therefore we should all aspire towards Brand A.

So what? Big deal? Duh! Can someone please explain to me the significance of initiating a discussion along this line? Most discussions go along the lines of bike ownership... yes, what brand or model of bike can indeed be a talking point on how a good athlete performs! Bike forums seem to be full of this silliness, if only because bikes are rightfully considered the most expensive piece of the multisport puzzle. I'm sure there are expert opinions on other bits of equipment as well, but by far the most common culprits stem from the cycling realm of things.

What about training? The hard yards? The early starts? The sacrifices? The advantages over the competition that cannot be obtained with cash? How about all these intangibles?

I have a theory. It is that all these so-called expert commentators are obliged to take pride on behalf of these 'people they know/heard about/admire'. Boasting on behalf of these athletes, unto the ignorant great unwashed, gratifies them. "Oh, i happen to know this little tidbit that you should know about too. See, so-and-so, who is successful, uses it. Uh-huh, thus Brand A is good". The commentator then sits back in the proverbial armchair and smirks, satisfied to have spread the Gospel to one more heathen that day, convinced that that soul may now be considered worthy of ascension into a higher plane of athletic development in the eyes of the God of Talking Shop.

Well, are they getting out there and bettering themselves? Or are they content to remain commentators, happy to orate to anyone who will listen and nod their heads in profound understanding?

Never mind the fact that they are not getting paid to advertise "Brand A", nor are sponsored, talented athletes receiving paychecks as a result of this unsanctioned 'expert' promotional blurb. Seems to me that these preachers have just placed themselves as cogs within the giant advertising machinery that is consumer-centric sports product marketing. As proxy-boasters, they should be paid for doing free advertising, yet they themselves are nowhere near the standard of these athletes they so admire.

You won't see me going around blurbing away: "Hey i know this brand - that fella uses it! And he did so well!" I'd sooner say: "You know, you should try it for yourself and see if it works for you". I'm more concerned about the person i'm addressing in front of me, rather than the person i would have boasted about had i gone the way of 'expert opinion'.

HAD one of the best training days in recent memory just today. Woke up sans alarm clock, ate brekkie while watching a rented movie. Ate an early lunch, then packed the bag and prepped the bike.

- Bike to Canoe Club 3/4 hour
- Run Yarra trails and singletrack for 1/2 an hour
- Kayak Yarra river 1 hour
- MTB Yarra trails and singletrack for 1/2 an hour
- Bike back home 3/4 hour

Not a lot compared to what i used to crank out last year (imagine, apart from the to-and-fro bike commute... 2 hour sessions PER discipline!), but a wonderful way to get back into the groove nonetheless.

Feeling upbeat and the foot pain was non-existent during the trail run... we must be on a roll here!

It is a rare opportunity to have to train up my running from scratch once more. I ran today, 4km, with a 1km warm-up and 1km cool-down, and it was enlightening to say the least. Crook as a dog i was, even as i tried to maintain a pace which i thought was about standard for an aerobic pace. So, on to 5km or running tomorrow, swim a fair bit as well tomorrow to correct my stroke (not much time left to sort that out). Perhaps fit in a MTB session to top it off in the afternoon.

Saturday, looks like a long bike ride, ease off with a recovery swim. Sunday i want to hit the kayaks again, with a trail run to ease back into the trail fitness side of things.

Today was the first time in almost 6 months since i last climbed into a kayak. Perfect weather too: pissing rain from an overcast sky, fast-flowing river, and the temperature hovering somewhere around 10 degrees. Lost my beanie in the Yarra! Anyway, time to get more kayaking in in time to avoid looking like an arse at Coast to Coast.

I've done some updating of the equipment links on the left-side nav' bar of this blog. Click and explore and find out truly how much gear an adventure racer can accumulate...! The list of stuff i have NOT got still reads like a Santa's wish list though. Some pretty standard equipment too....

- heart rate monitor system
- wrist-top navigation system (watch with compass, altimeter, barometer, the works)
- GPS
- HID + LED lighting system (Very high priority: Vicious Power... soon)
- Big wall climbing rack
- A kiteboard and a kite(!)

Tip #17: White is right

White light is the best for reading maps in most conditions - from half-light conditions during dwn/dusk, to pitch-black caves or under jungle canopies, to 'soft dispersed' moonlight. That means only one thing: LEDs. The problem with other coloured lights is that reading coloured maps becomes a problem. Annotation and route markings made with highlighters are easily missed if the light happens to correspond with the colour of the highlighter.

I understand that most standard halogen bulbs give off a yellow to orange-tinted light when battery power starts to drop off. Yellow highlighter markings, orange map features (usually secondary roads), and possibly brown map features (contour lines!!!) will become harder to see when viewed with an under-powered halogen light.

The worst one can do is make use of 'tactical' filters such as red or green in the hope of somehow preserving night vision. Red light will certainly obscure critical features like main roads red highlights, and annotations for dangerous or out-of-bound areas. Green light will hide both subtle and obvious changes in vegetation type or concentration on a map. The bottom line is that there is no need for 'tactical' light in an AR racing environment, where clarity in navigation should take priority over all other considerations.

LED lights do have limitations though. Poor quality or under-powered lights will give a blue tint, possibly obscuring key water features. 'Map glare' from pure white light, especially on high-owered systems, does tend to dazzle and cause 'blank spots' within one's vision field, and so navigator(s) will suffer some loss of night vision due to frequent referral to the maps and race notes. It is best to have a white light with variable light levels, so that glare is minimised whenever the maps have to be looked at.

I really have my doubts about Upper Murray. I definitely have the mountain biking legs in me, but i am going to suffer on the run unless i can clock up the running and kayaking race fitness within 4 weeks by some miracle. I guess i have departed from Sime's training schedule by quite a lot since the half-IM, and am more or less carving out my own rehab program right now.

For those readers reading this... classic example of how to go about rehab and re-evaluation of goals after a tough stretch. Listen to your own body/mind as first priority, and modify the program if you feel it does not address any physical, technical or tactical shortcomings in the overall structure of each race, or even the entire racing season.