Keeping Things in Perspective

Having lunch after a 120 km (75 mile) bike ride which didn’t go as well as I had hoped. I was reading an article about a female triathlete with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). She used the following quote from Mark Allen which really puts things into perspective:

“In the heat of competition it’s easy to get stuck on what is not going well, which causes you to lose sight of how lucky you are to be able to race … Find that place within yourself that is grateful to be alive and fit enough to even consider undertaking a triathlon.”

She noted that “I am just as grateful for great training days as I am for difficult training days and races, when everything is a struggle. Recovering from training or a race reminds me that I can compete when others living with MS may not be able to.”

They are right. I am very fortunate to have a body that works and to be able to train and compete. I guess that an average speed of 29 km/h wasn’t so bad after all …

Gravity is the enemy … momentum is your friend

My training plan called for a 3.5 h ride today, with 2 x 20’ at functional threshold power (FTP), with a 4’ break in between. When doing workouts like this the challenge is to find a road where you can maintain your FTP since there are often interruptions, such as pedestrians or other cyclists. I decided that the ideal route for doing this was to revisit the road I ran yesterday as it was a long uphill section, although I didn’t know exactly how long. As it transpired, it was long enough for it took me 1 h to reach the top, climbing just over 1000 m in 17 km. And that was just the start of a very nice 80 km ride.

Running Tbilisi’s Hills

When it comes to running in Tbilisi flat is an abstract concept. Last week I ran my usual route and my knee was quite sore at the end after descending a very steep street. This week I decided to go in the counter clockwise, and also head further up into the hills along the road, rather than run along the trail the entire route.  After 1 km I started uphill and finished about 4 km later.  It was a great 15 km loop and much easier, even though I had several km of downhill sections where I was clocking 6 minute miles. Had to focus on technique – fast turnover – to be sure I didn’t injure myself. A good workout so I’ll remember that one in the future.

ITU Championship Cup Triathlon Washington D.C.

Because of my bike crash I had to withdraw from the Eagleman 70.3 triathlon. Fortunately I had registered for the ITU Olympic distance race a week later on June 21 so I would have at least one early year race. While my fitness would not be where I had hoped, at least it would be a good test of my gear and get me back into the triathlon racing mentality. It was also nice to be racing in my ‘home’ town (for now) and to have Lis there as my race Sherpa. As you can see from the photo to the right, I did finish, in fact the race went much better than I anticipated.

Tbilisi Bike Mechanics

During our World Bank retreat at Bazeleti we were asked to introduce ourselves and say something unusual about who we are. My comment was that I am the Task Team Leader who travels with a bicycle. The following day when I was heading out our Regional Procurement Manager Devesh snapped the photo below with incriminating evidence. It does look a bit incongruous dressed to meet the Minister with the bike wheels. They were on the way to the bike mechanic for some work.

Running Again

Having started cycling again after my accident, my knee was holding up quite well. It was time to take the next step and start running again. Since I was going to be without my bike soon, I decided to give it a try when I got to Paris where I was spending two days for a meeting.

We arrived in the morning after our 04:00 flight from Tbilisi. After going to the office and catching up on work, the beautiful warm sunny weather of early June beckoned me to put on my shoes and see how the knee was progressing.

Cycling the Georgian Military Road

The World Bank organized a regional retreat in Georgia at Lake Bazaleti some 50 km from Tbilisi. The location was just off the ‘Georgian Military Road’, which was constructed by Russian engineers starting in 1799, helping cement Russia’s annexation of Georgia in 1801. It was an incredible feat as they had to  traverse the Caucasus mountains from Vladikavkaz in Russia to Tbilisi, and in doing so built a road which was better than most roads that existed in Russia. Since I had my bicycle with me, I took the chance for a short visit to this historic area.

Cycling Hawaii While in Armenia – Global Ride DVDs

As regular readers of my blog know, I travel for a living with the World Bank to a variety of interesting countries (some stories of these travels are here). To keep up my cycling fitness I strategically place bicycles in different countries along with a stationary trainer. I therefore spend a lot of time in hotel rooms with training DVDs. I was therefore very interested when I was contacted by Global Ride Productions and given a complementary copy of their new set of DVDs to review as I was getting a bit tired of being yelled at by Coach Troy.

Online Triathlon Bookstore

Ever since I was young books have been among my best of friends. This is evidenced by the overflowing bookshelves that we have at home – my wife is also a bookophile.  There is nothing quite like sitting in a comfortable chair with a good book to read.  Over the years I have assembled a good collection of triathlon related books, but unfortunately with all my travelling I often don’t have access to them. That is where electronic books come in handy. While they don’t have anywhere near the same attractiveness as ‘real’ books have, at least when I’m on the road somewhere I can refer to them. For that reason I was very excited when I heard about the Mindset Triathlon online bookstore – offering digital copies of triathon related books.

Bike Crash!

My Cervelo P3 is a great bike to ride, very fast in a straight line, but quite ‘skittish’ on corners.  This feature was most evident on May 12th when I was on the bike path and came to a tight corner with loose leaves. My P3 and I went down with a vengeance and when I came up I had the second worst injury of my cycling career.