Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Dirty weekend... no, dirty whole week!
Left: I do my best not to break the rocks with my body whenever i take on this part of the Commonwealth Games XC course.
Hehehehehe....
i'm fairly seething with excitement about what the weekend will bring. First up is XTERRA Australia (1000m swim/30km MTB/11km trail run) on Saturday at Daylesford. Looks like a whole day affair, but i'm taking it as the last decent hit-out before the main event - the Keen Alps to Ocean Adventure Race. Yup, it's about 400kms of fun from Falls Creek to Lakes Entrance over 5 days. I may paddle a bit on Sunday just to relax... then delivery of the Prijon Excursion sea kayak to the Rapid Ascent office. Monday is totally travelling with Brendan's loaded-up Subaru and Jan as support crew to the race start. We then kick off on Tuesday....
Packing for Keen brought back memories of packing for the big races: XPD, Raid the North Extreme, Sabah Adventure Challenge, even Coast to Coast. It also made me appreciate how EASY logistics for a triathlon is in comparison. Sorry my triathlete friends, if you think prepping for your A-priority, swim-bike-run 'race of the year' is a bitch, you ain't seen nothing yet.
But first, XTERRA. Elaine from Melbourne Uni' (Monash's sworn rival institution) is checking it out too. Apparently this SEA Games national athlete is being encouraged by her local training group to 'have a bash' at the off-road format. Good on ya! She managed to get hold of Del's bike (guess who was the middle man?) for this race. We'll drive up to Daylesford early Saturday morning and take it from there....
Elaine does not have any MTB shoes or pedals, and so she asked me whether she could use her road shoes and pedals for the 30km off-road ride, i was like "Errr... what?". Even given the non-technical nature of most XTERRA bike courses, I would not do that. it's a good way to wreck a pair of shoes or pedals, and i told her so. Hope she can find a pair of off-road shoes + pedals soon.... =P
