Wishing everyone a belated happy new year! The start of the year hasn’t exactly turned out they way I had planned. Training’s been inconsistent and I had have to make the hard choice to not race both Challenge Melbourne, and South West Sufferfest. I made the choice based on the fact that I’m not interested in going to races at 50%, and that I believe in giving a race distance/event the respect that it should. The reason behind the lack of training is current work load thanks to Melbourne’s heat wave and and the industry I work in. Nothing I can do about it, you have to take the good with the bad, and I have learnt to deal with it.
As for the year ahead, there’s going to be of a change up with racing and focus. For the next few years, I’ll be going back to focusing most of the year on cycling, with a block of triathlon racing thrown in towards the end of my season. There are a number of reasons driving this choice. One being I love to race and cycling is the easiest way for me to race often. The other is that the peak of triathlon season and the peak of my work load clash. It’s all about making work, life and sport work together as best I can throughout a year.
I’m currently still working with my coach on planning out my season and race program. At this stage it will feature a number of Club, State, and NRS races on the cycling side with a few long course tri’s thrown in late in the year. As for training, its about getting on the bike whenever I can, and practicing the thing I haven’t had to worry about over the past few years, like sprinting. Believe it or not, sprinting is not as simple as just stepping on the pedals as hard and fast you can. There’s a lot of little things like body position, gear selection and timing of when you apply force to the pedals, that slowly add up to gaining some critical meters.
Well that's all for now, until next time
Hopper
