My longest ride and swim ever...

Last Sunday I completed the Strava Gran Fondo for March. At 185 kilometers. I am fairly certain it was my longest ride ever.
My fellow 7 Peaks finisher - Phil and I started at 5:30am in Camden (south-west of Sydney) and rode 45km north to Penrith before turning west and climbed The Great Western Highway toward Springwood in the Blue Mountains.
From Springwood we headed north through Winmalee to stop for coffee at Richmond around 8:30.
We then rode through to Windsor and on to join the M7 orbital motorway (cycleway) for the trip home.
I felt good and was happy with the pace, around 29.4kph for the whole trip.

I also did my longest swim ever - 4km. I wasn't pushing it because I wanted to test out how I would go with toe, calf and full leg cramps. I only got a few at around the 3.5km mark, with one calf cramp that forced me to stop for around 30 seconds. So I am happy with the 1 hour 18 minute time it took. There were a few higher paced surges that probably contributed to the cramps but I think I could have done it a bit quicker.

I have just bought an Orca 3.8 wetsuit so I am ready for a bit of cold water swimming now that it is early autumn.

The Garneau Vorttice helmet just arrived. I'll get that on the weekend from the bro in-law bro. Bloody legend!

Things are starting to fall into place. All I need now is to concentrate on the big kays, in and out of the water.

I'll have to plan some regular open water swims in the ocean and at the Penrith Regatta Centre. Saturdays are the big days.

[Monday 24th of May]

The Melbourne Ironman race was on yesterday. While I was hanging out at home doing the lawns having brunch and doing normal weekend family get together things, two fellow MacTri members were smashing it out down south.

They did really well! Just over 9 and 13 hours. All through the day I was checking on their progress and as the hours passed it really started to psych me out as the realisation set in that in only 76 days from today I will be in the hurt locker for just as long as these guys. If it takes me longer, hopefully it won't be much more than that...

Now... Where's that training plan... I'd better review my training week.

Bye for now.