HMMMM Training Begins

Ok so things have been a bit shakey on the health front since new years. Everyone in our apartment has been handing the flu around and unfortunately I was one of the last to get it. As such once the weather did finally clear enough for us to go riding I was still sick. Well the concrete pills have been taken and with the recent purchase by Rodrigo of a new Trek Session 8 we decided to spend the day shuttling the Portalegre Nats Track, He made it 50m before flipping over the bars on a road gap stepdown. Right first stack out of the way time to get down to some real riding. After sweeping the track to check for hazards we got straight back up to the top and started to speed things up a bit. The main issue I've had with this track is that we've only ever done 1-2 runs tops before calling it a day and therefore never really got into it.

It was also the first time doing Dh runs clipped in and I will admit I was a little apprehensive to begin with, I've always enjoyed being able to drop a foot when necessary and the ability to do so had really saved my bacon on the last ride down this track a few weeks ago. But having been riding around the tracks at work on the tight technical stuff has made a huge improvement in my balance and being clipped proved to be advantageous rather than a nuisance. And the only crash I had ended up being funny rather than painful and as usual was after those fateful words were uttered, Just one more run....oh shit.  

So thats the biking stuff out of the way now for the other stuff in the life of Bandit Racing. Yesterday Seb, Kurt, Rodrigo and I went over to Batalha to trade in his utterly rooted giant reign for a brand new Trek, that would have normally seemed ok as most people close to me will know I tend to get stuck for hours at the bike shop. But this trip was made even better by the fact that there is an utterly amazing church in the town. The detail was simply breathtaking and the sculpting of the stone and marble in the place must have taken several mens entire lifetimes.

Then with that gem of a church inspected we headed over to Tomar, and more specifically to the Convento de Christo( or Convent of Christ) Which history buffs will know happens to be the former headquarters for the Templar Knights of the Crusades. This place is fantastic, and we spent literally hours looking around the endless wonders of this cornerstone of military history. We had access to the top 3 levels of the place but as it was relatively evident if you were paying attention there were at least 3 more basement style levels we couldn't legally get to, and as curious as I was getting arrested was not going to be on the agenda.

Now our Sunday is drawing to a close and it's time to relax and just chill out with a couple of quiet drinks, do some maintenance on the bikes and start drawing up a training schedule. With only 4 and a half weeks till we fly out and not one race here before National Champs in Dunedin things are going to be tough and all I can do is to be as fit as possible.