Oppy 2009

What a great 24 hours, even now as the pain subsides I experience the quiet euphoria of post extreme exercise, body stress, NSAIDs and home brew. Gotta love this cycling pastime. In the end the Dogs did 367km despite my best efforts to sabotage the run. I had a spate of punctures, the first 160km in, followed shortly by the revelation that the headlight mount had broken rendering next to useless my lumotec senso plus. Luckily cheap Blaze flashers kept me on the straight and Richard and Greg were generous with their more carefully aimed lights when the going got tricky - or fast.

I had two more punctures this morning in the time critical portion of our ride from Picton to Parramatta, so I'm now looking for a replacement options for the Stelvio's I'm currently running. The punctures cost at least 20 minutes and my breakfast at Maccas.

We did however make the target in impeccable time (bang on 9am) despite, me, my doubts, lack of stamina, hills and traffic lights. Next time we will take the M7. The breakfast was terrific and the train trip back and our combined aroma's meant we had the compartment to ourselves. Even the transit police were "distant".

All in all a wonderful day, my second Oppy but no less challenging. Congratulations to all of the finishers.

Mileage in Kilometres = 1431

Opperman 2009

Have joined the Mongrel Dogs Opperman team again this year and will be doing 364km from Dapto to Parramatta via Goulburn with an overnight stop at Picton. I plan to update progress via twitter so you can share my pain!

Henry, Richard and I did a training run out to Picton yesterday to check out the motel and drop in the deposit. I was another beautiful autumn day, with a low mist in the valleys and mild temperatures. I felt pretty strong and am finding that the new approach of lower cadence and bigger gears is paying off. That and riding a lot more.

Mileage in Kilometres = 1028

Beautiful day

It was a beautiful morning and I had a bit of time up my sleeve so got to enjoy a 50km ride while everyone else was rushing to work. Some days I'm really happy to have a bike!

Mileage in Kilometres = 890

So...

So after the AAC I had a bit of a rest, did a light ride and felt a bit breathy. I used to smoke and suffered bronchitis most winters and the feeling was similar. Bugger I thought, I have got a virus of some description.

Couple of days later, found myself a bit more breathless after walking up some stairs. Then I got breathless walking along the flat. Being a sensible person, I took myself to the Doctor who checks my blood pressure, checks it again (wincing) goes and gets another BP machine. Hmm she says that's a bit high have to run some tests, is there a history of heart problems in your family? Well, only my father....

Anyway over the last 4 weeks I've been scanned, prodded, xrayed, ECGed, and generally done over by radiologists, referred to a cardiologist and prodded at some more. By now I felt much better but was pretty worried, as were my family. I really began to feel like there was something awfully wrong with me, so much machinery focusing upon my internal workings. It put me in mind of this clip






So, earlier today I had a front row seat watching an ultrasound of my own heart which was pretty cool and with the image of my hearts valves flicking open and closed I was little more confident that there was in fact nothing (significantly) wrong with me and that its now time to step off the medicinal roundabout. To celebrate, I've decided to do the Sydney Melbourne Alpine 1200, just to have something to focus upon.

It will be my first 1200.

It will be very hard. Especially If I don't get riding soon.

I rode this afternoon for the first time in a while.

As a plus, after all of the tests, My lungs are fine desipte years of abuse, my heart is strong and my veins and arteries run free of fatty deposits. I am in fact quite well.

Distance in Kilometers 693.32 (and counting)