Tuesday 4 August 2015

#3ChicksDoTaupo

No, that's not a hashtag for a bad "Adult" movie. 


Last week I loaded my bike onto the back of a minivan and headed off to Taupo with my coach and another girl crazy enough to enter into endurance training by choice. 
Emma, Del and I spent the week surrounded by beautiful NZ scenery and tortured our bodies all in the name of IronMan training.


Wednesday was an early start for me with RPM in the morning and racing around to be packed and ready by lunch time. A slight delay in transport meant we arrived in Taupo close to 8pm. Del and Emma braved through their tiredness and headed to the pool while I blobbed on the couch and settled for a bit of MKR. The pool has been a bit of a battle for me lately, but more about that later.

Thursday's plan was a 90km ride out to Reporoa and back to Taupo. Having just ridden 100km 4 days prior, one can imagine (and even read about) the thoughts going through my mind before this ride. I was a little nervous, but at least this time I knew I could handle it. This route is the same one used in the Taupo IronMan series, so doing one lap was the course for the half IronMan. 

While scoffing our breakfast we sat down with Emma and went through our nutrition for the ride - how many carbs we needed to consume while training in order to fuel our bodies to get through the ride (and apparently a run afterwards. FML). 
Essentially, you need 1.0-1.5g of carbohydrate per kg of body weight per hour of work. I weigh just under 60kg (I actually don't know, somewhere around 57kg I think) and assumed I would be training for around 4 hours.

I needed to consume a minimum of 240g of carbohydrate while riding. 
That's 8 bananas. Or 20 Weetbix. Or 8 peanut butter sandwiches. 
All of which would be quite hard to carry on a bike. 

Instead we broke this down to 2 One Square Meal bars and 3 drink bottles filled with Replace (Horley's version of Powerade). 
It was at this point that I realised that the 1 1/2 OSM bars and 2 bottles of electrolytes (not containing sugar) that I consumed on my Martinborough ride was a little short of what I should have eaten. Just 140g short. Oops.

So, off we went, carb loaded and ready for some sunshine. 
The ride out was awesome. It was perfect weather, no wind and a warm sun to keep us smiling. We arrived in around 1hr 50. 
Emma and Del took off ahead of me for the ride home, I had a quick stretch and jumped back on for a fast ride home. It was at this turn around in Reporoa that I realised the cruisy ride out was a result of a very slight down hill road the WHOLE way. So the return ride meant an uphill slog for approx 35km. FML.
Then the wind started. Not just any wind. A head wind which progressively worsened over the next 2 1/2 hours that it took me to slog it home. 
Those 2 1/2 hours involved a lot of swearing, tears, one full sit down tantrum on the side of the road and a poorly blown snot rocket which landed across the side of my face. 

The ride profile. It looks flat, but that is a very slight bastard of a hill; Speed profile; Team Giant

After arriving home, exhausted and out of tears, Emma "encouraged" me to put on my running shoes and go for a run. 10 mins. Arrrrrrgh!!!
I did 12 mins. BOOM! 1st brick session DONE!

Friday was a much needed rest day. After hanging out with my awesome cousin and her kiddies for the morning, I fell asleep on the couch in front of trashy day time TV for majority of the afternoon. 
Two extras also joined us Friday evening, Mike and one of my besties/fellow-endurance-training-crazy-person, Nicole. After registering for our race the next day, off to the pool we went. 
I tried everything I could to get out of that swim. Lately I have developed a hateful relationship with the pool and will avoid it at all costs. I strongly dislike being bad at things. Swimming is one of those things. 
After the hard word from the coach and with Nicole offering to help coach me for this swim session I begrudgingly put on my togs and hopped in the car.
Nicole coached me through a few drills to help with my technique and made the session a lot more tolerable and focused than it otherwise would have been. I may have enjoyed it. Don't tell anyone. 

Proof that I got into the pool. I swam too. Strava has proof. 

Saturday was race day. This was actually the whole point of our trip. Emma, Del and Mike all ran the half marathon while Nicole and I busted out the 10km race. Because this is MY blog I am only going to mention MY awesome results. Just quietly though, Nicole absolutely smashed this race because she is amazing. 

Pre race #selfie
I finished the race in 56.09mins. Not a PB but running a slightly hilly course on fatigued legs was a tough effort and I'm pretty proud of it. I also finished 15th (out of 40) in my age group.

I paid for these photos. Don't zoom in on my face, it's not pretty.
This race was followed by a trip to De Bretts thermal pools and a beer.
Awesome trip and I'm excited to get in another before the big events!

Huge thanks to Emma and Nicole for all your motivation and support and of course to Del for our transport and amazing apartment! Let's do it again!



Check out #3chicksdotaupo on Instagram for more pics