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Tue, 18 Jan 2005

Health and Fitness - 17:09
I've been grinding away trying to get fit, I think it's working. Although I'm still very slow off the mark. This became quite evident at Dunc Gray.
It's pretty much been track v Audax which equates to speed v endurance.
Anyhow I'm less than 80 target 74

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Weekend in Sydney - 16:52
Rachel and I spent the weekend in Sydney. Friday night was a good start to the weekend, a pleasant dinner at Vania's new house in O'Connor. It was nice to catch up with Travis, Ben, Kirsten and of course Vania. Both Rachel and Travis still hold their strong and opposite views on most movies, they really need to start the new movie show.
An Saturday morning we left for Sydney. I had used Quickbebs.com to book a room. I choose Bankstown Sports Club as the price was good and they also run the Dunc Grey Velodrome. The Travelodge is in the club and it has free parking. The hotel is also a very short walk from Bankstown station, very handy for trains to the city or Newtown.
Anyhow, we arrived about 2pm only to discover that trains were not running, track work was on that weekend. Rachel was not keen to bus it to Newton so we walked around Bankstown. It's a curious mix or Vietnamese and Lebanese shops, culture and people. In the end we decided to have lunch, Vietnamese was on the menu, which we could not read. Luckily there was an English version once we sat down inside. Rachel did some shopping and I did a bit of walking around.
At 5pm or so we headed off to Dunc Gray Velodrome. I had put an entry in for the Southern Highlands Track Open which was sponsored by Phantom Cycles at Tahmoor
I hate to offend most bike riders by saying that riding a very good and very fast wooden velodrome is the most exciting thing I've done on a bike. I have ridden the boards before, but only stuffing around on a lent bike below the line on the apron in Lanceston. On Saturday I was a bit apprehensive at first, I would not leave the pole line. But as the warm up progressed and I joined a bunch I started going up the track as we passed slower riders and other bunches. One of the hardest things to do is to get out of the saddle up the banking to jump on the bends. I only manged that in the final race of the night. I was there for the experience, but my harsh handicap did not help. I was on 120 metres for the handicap and got c grade open and masters a grade. Sluggo, a local a grader got 140 metres and a d grade open ride. We both rode masters a grade. What can I say, the racing was crazily fast. I manged to hang on till the final lap when the pace went from furious to astronomical. I suspect the pace was in excess of 60kph as I was totally spinning out a gear of 50x14 (96 inches sorto like a 53x15) I did not have sore legs at the time and my lungs were OK at the time, I just could not spin any faster. Later that night when I was tyring to sleep my legs were aching quite a bit.
The next morning we woke to a muggy sort of day, the plan was to head off to Cogee to have a surf and swim. When we got there Rachel just had to have coffee (groan) I suppose that was not the major hassle, parking was. I had never driven there before, always choosing either to catch the bus or ride in. Anyway, we had a good time, the waves were quite big at first, so we retreated to the pools on the south side of the beach. Then we hit the waves again, avoiding all the seaweed. It was great fun. On the way home we stopped at Berrima for lunch and to stock up on some chutney. The drive was pretty boring and tedious, now I have to decide whether the fun of that track is worth the drive. This week we head off to Bright with Steve and an assortment of other people for the Audax Alpine Classic. Just one more aspect of the wonderful world of cycling. I can not wait for the descent down Mt. Buffalo.

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