It has been quite a big week. Sam and I left Melbourne last Monday morning bound for the US. After 30 hours of travel and one missing bag we finally arrived in Boulder, which is where we will be based for the next 4 months.It seems only yesterday that we were last here. It is great to be back and hardly anything has changed at all. However the place we are staying at now has chooks…which is quite the novelty!
For most of the week we have just been settling back in and adjusting to the time difference, altitude and the travel. All of these factors combined have left my body feeling pretty sluggish, however within the next week or so I should start to feel ‘normal’ again. One of the most important factors to consider when coming to altitude is to ensure the body has the time it needs to adjust before training hard again. Doing too much too soon will leave you buried in a hole which is very hard to get out of when up this high. As such I have only done about half my weekly volume with very little intensity. It’s a little frustrating as I want to be training hard straight away, however patience is the key and with my first race less than 2 weeks (Kansas 70.3) I want to be fresh and ready to go, not still recovering from pushing too hard too soon.
This morning I completed my first long run at an easy pace, however I made sure that I stayed on the heavily populated trails as this bear fear has still got the better of me…but I will conquer it!! I feel as though I have made some small progression though, as there are now a herd of cows on my favourite running trail that I have to run through, this would normally have freaked me right out however now I can run within a metre of them no worries!
On another note, I am currently watching Sam race in his first road race of the US season, the Superior-Morgul Classic. It’s a pretty big road race over here of about 80 mile. Since the peleton only comes past once every 17 mile I thought it a fine chance to blog in between laps. He has just gone through lap 3 of 6 and is sitting pretty in the middle of the bunch and looks good. I have been put on camera duty, so the following photos are of the race. Although I am not very good at multi-tasking so it is either photos or cheering, not both!
This week I’ll start to increase the training a bit more. Between sessions will be sleeping, eating and studying…as I have exams in less than 3 weeks. Studying over here is much more fun than studying at home, as Starbucks (and just about every other café, restaurant, shopping centre) has free WIFI, so I can set myself up on the compfy couches with a grande no whipped cream mocha with a shot of espresso (seriously the choices of coffee over here are mind boggling!) in one hand and study notes in the other. It is good to have something to do between sessions to keep my mind active rather than just watch countless episodes of Sex and the City!
I will check back in next week with another blog. In the meantime I have got the twitter account up and running Maddie_Oldfield
with regular updates, so be sure to hit the follow button and get with the Twitter rage!
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