On the other side of the world a 24hr flight away and six weeks on from taking a tumble, I’m back on the road pedaling around my old stomping ground of the Waikato.  The temperature might be a little on the fresh side but I reckon you can’t beat the rolling farm roads here in the Waikato, for some solid training in peace and without having to ride the same route every week. 

I have started riding up to an hour and half twice a day at the moment and it seems to be going well so far.  I have my knee strapped every day try to take some tension off the patella as the ITB band and the rest of my quad muscle still feels like a rubber band ready to go ‘ping’.   So I’ll be leaving the monitoring of that to the physio to keep working his magic, as I quietly begin building the muscle back to its original strength. 

As you well know the days are fairly short here in the winter, ‘to be honest I’d forgotten after spending the last 3years jumping from summer to summer’ so the good buggas here at the TA cycling club have a training night every Wednesday under lights at the track for all those working folk who can’t get out before dark.  It’s been going for quite a few years now and I can remember back in our school days we used to have ball racing round there until we couldn’t feel our feet or hands anymore.  Though last Wednesday night was slightly different, as after 5 weeks of doing virtually nothing I found myself sitting beside my coach, Graham Bunn ‘Bunny’.  We were on the front of a group and it was him telling me how long we still have to go in our turn, as we rode along at around 32kph and my heart rate continually climbing, I was glad to hear Bunny say that was enough, before I starting getting into the uncomfortable zone haha.  I will say though Bunny is currently leading the D grade winter series here with an unassailable lead, so he’s in some pretty fine form at present. 

This weekend will be time to start pushing the rides out a little longer and spend more time in that uncomfortable state as I work on bringing my fitness back to the level needed to compete in the pro peloton.  Until next time Tim