the birm*

Talk about a big week-end! Men’s brekkie sat morning at mcca’s (where else!?) at the rude time of 6:30am (in the morning…on Saturday!!). It had been pelting down with rain fri night all night, so when I got to the bottom of my street I drove through about 2ft of water!!!

That arvo I left with Damian (my 8 hour race team mate) and his son Alex en route to the blue mountains. I dropped them off at a wedding in wentworth falls and hang out with some mates in blackheath (10kms away). at about 5ish I went for a walk with Adski along the cliff to check out some climbs (Shipley). It was unreal, the sun was setting but due to the rain and mist it was just getting dark, which made it like a scene out of Lord of the Rings (cliffs, trees, canyons, mist, wind, rain…). We had dinner at the pub then I picked up Damian and Alex and headed to Canberra. We got to a friend’s place in Canberra at 1am (she was at the wedding so we let ourselves in) for a few hours kip. Up at 6:30 and into the car, brekkie on the way. We got to the race to a mild -1 degrees… the track out there (just outside Queanbeyan) is unreal, one of the best of the series. It’s so fast and fun with no real technical bits but plenty of fitness testing sections. A great mountainbike race (I got a flat again! Almost same place as last year), blue sky and warm day (bit not hot, which was excellent), then back in the car. We had dinner at Lisa and Nick’s (where we’d slept the night) and headed home. Driving back to newie wasn’t easy, as we hadn’t had much sleep and had raced pretty hard for 4 hours each. We changed over a couple of times, taking good advantage of the cruise control feature of Damian’s Outback. Finally home at 10 past midnite, absolutely trashed! I wasn’t looking forward to hearing the alarm 6 hours later to go to school…