Down Under

I've been back home for just over seven months now and am finally getting some time to post anything worth writing about.

Coolum Beach, along the David Low Way

I'm combining my time between teaching full time and training as much as I can. At least with the amount of work I'm doing, I can save for more racing hopefully next year, because the training is limited at the moment! I wake before 5am, head to swim training and don't stop for a break until 7pm after swimming or running has finished. Given that I'd rather spend my spare time training, it's enjoyable, but exhausting.

Cotton Tree Pool - 20hrs of my week

I am blessed to be training from Alexandra Headland in Queensland, Australia. To add to my pool swimming, I have the stunning Mooloolaba beach for open water swimming. For riding, I have the "hinterland" and the beautiful strip of road to Noosa, the David Low Way. On a sunny day, that ride is pretty much the meaning of life. Between running on the school track and along the beach front, I also have hectares of national parks to run in, including the torturous Radar Hill (2k from bottom to top - 9:59mins is my pb). I am even getting some consistent time in the gym too.

In fact, my gym work is co-ordinated by one of my year 12 students who is completing some certificate that requires he lead a gym program, so it's working out superbly for both of us.

 

Teaching is a blast at my school. I've never been to a school where I've found the most enjoyable part of the job being in the classroom interacting with the students.

I am teaching year 12 Legal Studies, 11 Business Comms. and Techs., 10 Physics, 9 Science, 9 HPE and 9 Business Studies. I don't know how I'm going to cope when my 12s finish. They are my number one priority this year (triathlon being #2 and wedding in November #3) and I will just have to wish them all the best.

Last week was school camp with the year 11s and it rates as one of the best weeks of my life. I was even sick for the final three days, but given I was preoccupied with all of the activities, I didn't have time to notice. The group I had was brilliant, I appreciated their enthusiasm and participation immensely. On the final night, we had a motivational speaker get the kids to say what they liked about me if they had the courage to stand up in front of the cohort (or if they actually did have anything nice to say!) and it went for almost 20 minutes. One of the girls even cried, she got so emotional. I don't value material things much, placing great value on the emotional and effort based rewards instead, so that experience was one of the best gifts I've ever received.

Aside from setting young girls' (and apparently boy's) hearts alight at camp, I've been getting a few open water swimming races done. I timed a sprint finish to perfection in one and won my age group. I'm using these races to "test the waters" for a return to international racing.

I'd love to start racing in July, but at the very latest, it'll be September and October, before going all in for a summer of training and hopefully my first elite Australian block of racing.

Alpe D'Huez

It's taken me this long to return to racing, even though I was only doing this one for the fun of participating. The Alpe D'Huez is one of the most famous and celebrated Tour de France climbs. I raced the short course (1200m swim, 30k cycle, 7k run) expecting to do ok despite my lower training load this year, but really just wanted to finish and enjoy being able to compete.

Then diabetes happened. This is the email I sent my parents in the after race.

Hi, just checking in.


I've never had worse diabetic conditions than I did today. I broke the Mr Bean record*.


Spent the whole morning with meter reading "hi"**. The adrenalin of the whole thing was inhibiting my insulin. Tested 45mins before race still "hi". Swam slowly, rode the downhill section into a headwind. Bsl still felt high. In fact it still felt high at the first aid station.


Somewhere between the two stations I slowed so much my garmin didn't think I was moving and the two ppl I had been slowly moving away from blew past me. I started seeing stars and half my vision was going black like I'd been staring into the sun for a few seconds, but I was still hesitant to drink my sugar drink because my blood still felt high. After about a k I gave it a shot and it tasted so good that I drank it all within 200m. Another k up the road I was still in hell and pulled up beside a Marshall to pull out given there was still 10k to go and I had no more sugar til the next aid station. At the same moment I unclipped, a lady passed out back down the climb, so off went the Marshall and the closest ambulance. 

Working on my tan

I only added this photo for the scenery

I was fucked. I sat there and realised after a few minutes that the soonest chance I had of getting more sugar was riding up myself. So on I went.

Station to station took me 40mins of garmin time (it paused for my break and whenever I was going especially slowly, so would have been another 10mins). That's roughly 50mins for 5k - walking pace. 


Two drinks of about 300mls of Powebar's sports drink and a powerbar taken through the second aid station and possibly a gel (I honestly can't remember) before I started to feel a little better and confident that I could get to the top. 


Sugar bursts were fun. At one stage I got into the big chain ring and booted it up to 35kph going at about 6% gradient. To answer your question, you try making rational decisions, or decisions at all with no sugar going to your brain. I guess you just going into a default mode and do everything by that, mine was "I'm racing a triathlon, go as fast as possible!"


Had blown completely again by the top of the climb, but this time there were occasional flat sections where I was just destroying everyone around me only for them to pass me as I looked like I was practicing track stands every time the road went above 5%.

Heading out transition hugging a PowerGel. 

Walked through all of the aid stations on the run, but was still blowing everyone away. Was having a good run probably close to 4min k's until the downhill. Cramped in both hammy's. Couldn't run downhill without them cramping. The last third of the course is downhill. Stopped for maybe 5-10mins waiting for them to release and then walked until the last 400m of flat.

Perhaps if I'd have removed the watermark, I'd have been more aero...

Literally couldn't have done anymore than I did. But sitting there with half of Alpe D'Huez to go, no sugar left and close to passing out was the worst it's ever been. I checked my legs, neither of them were broken***, so kept going. Now I just have to wait for my organs to start functioning properly again****. I only hope I can use that fight to race harder and faster in future.

You wouldn't know it but I was trying to run as slowly as possible and still dropping these dudes. Then they all dropped me on the downhill!

Otherwise I'm well. I seem to have it under control, but I can't even begin to tell you how much coke, gels, Powebars or sports drinks I've had today, but it would have been more calories than any Christmas we've ever had!*****

* The Mr Bean Record was my previous worst low blood sugar. When I was 12 or so I was watching the Mr Bean movie not noticing my sugar level dip ridiculously low. By the time we'd noticed, mum had to basically yell at me to keep eating and drinking or I'd forget what I was supposed to do.

** When your Blood Sugar is so high that the meter couldn't even bother giving it a score, it reads "hi"

*** My father used to tell my brother and I when we were playing rugby as kids that we weren't to come off the field or go down claiming injury unless our leg was broken.

**** One of the tough things I find about racing and training is that sometimes straight after a race, my organs just seem to shut down a bit. They stop processing waste which make glucose control almost impossible. My only way to prevent it is to stay on the move and keep the blood flowing.

***** As a young child I was only allowed junk food on my birthday, easter and christmas as a result of diabetes. Naturally, I would gorge myself to make up for the other 362 days of the year I had missed out.

With my return to Australia in only a couple of months, I hope to get a few more blogs in to wrap up my time here. Once back in Aus I endeavour to focus purely on the triathlon side of things, mixing it up with the diabetic things I go through.

What teaching teaches me

I think a lot. Triathlon gives you a lot of time to go over things in your head whilst training. I go over what my day included, how to do it better and how to do the next day best.

I really strive to avoid being hypocritical too. So for all the things I preach to my students I don't dare to fail to practice. Here is a list of the 5 most important things I observe from my students at the moment that I carry across and practice in my life:

1. The difference between those achieving and those that aren't is a willingness to accept responsibility for achieving.

2. Trying and getting it wrong is as important as trying and getting it right. Sure, if you are so omnipotent that you can get the whole picture every time, then you might never need to get it wrong. But for those "young souls" among us, failure just means you're trying to get better. Just work out what you did wrong and don't make that mistake again.

3. Check that what you are doing is right! Don't just slam through a block of work and assume that you are correct. Check you answers, do time trials, do whatever it takes to assess your objective. Otherwise by the time the test/race rolls around you're going to look like a fool.

4. Just follow simple instructions and you will get far. If you think that for some reason you are exempt from things everyone else must follow and not paying attention as a result, chances are you will fail on your test too or at least just make life harder for yourself.

5. Don't revise the hard questions on exams if you can't even do the easy ones. I've literally taught over a thousand students and I've only once seen this work (and I think it was a fluke). If you can't yet run 32mins off the bike for 10k, don't try to run 31mins. You'll blow up. If you're not hitting your times in races but you're doing more than enough work on it, maybe you're working too hard or on the wrong stuff. Number one symptom of this is blaming everyone else other than yourself, even though you weren't listening to the people you blame in the first place. Yeah, I have a year 11 kid who drives me mental on this - I am now at the point where I try to politely ignore him or else I'll stress myself sick!

I make these mistakes with my training all the time. I was never the perfect student either. They are what I've seen lead to disappointment though. In fact, if you see me doing any of them, remind me and put me in my place!

Alicante, Spain

One really cool thing about teaching in London is that there are three terms and each one has a half term break. During the "Easter" holidays, we're going to my two favourite cycling races, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. During the recent half term break, we went to Alicante.

It was really good to get out of London's weather and into the Spanish sun. It was good to get some consistent running going too, in particular in a beautiful location.

End result: it was a great experience and I'm looking forward to the chance to race and or train in the country on another occasion.  Did I mention four days cost $800AUD including flights, accomodation and eating out for every meal.

A bit of pre travel humour. I laughed out aloud at this poster of Cook smiling about bringing home the Ashes!

GF shopping at the airport. Has an expensive addiction...

Given the car dooring in Melbourne recently, how good are these reminders to cyclists?

Apologies for the camera flipping midway.: I had to dodge some ppl and things

"F.r.i.e.n.d.s night club" Yup, they based a night club off an American sitcom

Giant lolly shop. No wonder Team Novo Nordisk (all diabetic cycling team) does training camps here

A school for learning English. The sign says "No English, No  future". 

Might spend the bulk of November, December, January and February in this country. Something of a paradise :D

London Bike and Tri Show

This event happened over a month ago and was really cool. It's all a bit out of date to be talking about it too much, so I'll show all the photos I've got with briefs about why we took them.

Yes, I said we. I took my girlfriend. You'd some who has competed in three world championships (2x Cross Country, 1 x Triathlon) and will spend 8 hours the weekend prior shopping would enjoy being at a sports based expo. No. Put it this way, I'm glad there was some sort of travel expo going on at the same time or I'd have had to leave incredibly early!

I'm not sure why there is a triathlon show in February, but I can tell why this one is on. There is another, earlier established one a few weeks later. Still, I don't understand why it's not held closer to the start of the season.

This leads me to also wonder when the season kicks off officially in England. Australia has Noosa, but what is it here? For me, I'm aiming to be right to go from June 1. I have set minimum standards to meet each month between now and then before I'm happy with my form to race. All I can hope is that my run of illness and injury subsides so that I can actually do some training!

Sample Gels from High 5 - so valuable given the hardest thing for a lot of people is choosing a flavour they can handle

Local British Brand. Funny how we don't get bikes in Aus unless they are ridden by a World Tour team.

The club I'm in back in Aus would love this and would surely pay a fair bit for it.

Hipster central

Neil Pryde had some cool looking frames

Our Expos normally have the regular 3x3 or 6x3 spaces. Seeing open air lots were great. Seeing a couch and armchairs was amazing, one of the best stands from Chapeau

Hardnutz. You'd think they made cricket boxes, but their helmets looked quality too.

Back at Chapeau

Still at Chapeau

Hope had a fairly cool casing for their lot. Makes sense since they makes bearing casings etc.

My girlfriend was signed to Sky while I had my back turned

Literally my favourite paint/decals job in the world. I can't believe he is considering riding a bike that looks like Ronald McDonald threw up on it this year.

Contintenal has a MASSIVE display box that has to be a permanent fixture of their Euro shows. No wonder they don't bother with Australia anymore

These guys make a 4.9kg bike (with group set) that looked just amazing. Will cost $20,000AUD. 

When the sun comes up at 8am and goes down at 4pm, fluoro yellow is big here

These seat stays look identical to my Cannondale Evo's. The Cannondale guy found it amusing too

Bikes for my mum :P

Yep, a classic tv on top of a stand holding satchels you can wear whilst riding. And styling.