Rachel Baker – A Mini Adventure

I wasn’t sure on what I wanted to write about this week, I had a few ideas but I just couldn’t really decide. My health has improved from my last update (yay, I’m not sick anymore), it took a bit longer to get better than I expected. I felt fine most of the time but I lost my voice which took a long time to get back; it showed that my body wasn’t really fully recovered. I was excited to get back into training more this week especially since Spring Challenge is slowly creeping up.

So the training session set was a cycle called rolling hills, 2hrs, sweet. My friend had asked me the week before if I wanted to go cycling, so I thought this looked like a good session for him to join me on. Spending 2hrs cycling around the cashmere downs didn’t sound overly exciting, so I decided I would go on a mission to find some other rolling hills.

We started at CPIT after class and rode up Dyers Pass road (it definitely doesn’t count as a rolling hill), and then down the other side and on to Lyttelton. I did not think this section of the ride through. It was awesome riding along Governors Bay Road, with some kinda rolling hills which is what I had been hoping to find and awesome views. It was going pretty well until we reached Lyttelton……so…. it turns out you’re not allowed to bike through the tunnel, oops and the only other road out is over the hill, which is closed…… My friend talked to a guy on the street about some options. He was about the walk up the bridle path…that’s a good idea. So we decided rather than to bike all the way back the way we came, we would push/carry our bikes up the Bridal Path. 🙂 It was one of those moments where it was convenient that I currently use mountain bike cleats and shoes on my road bike. It was a bit of fun going up that hill, and I had some good conversations with the guy who gave us the idea. Once at the top of the hill we got some nice views. We turned right at the top of the bridle path and only had a little bit more hill along summit road before turning down Mt Pleasant Road and whizzing downhill, which was awesome. We ended our little adventure back at CPIT where I picked up my backpack full of my study stuff and biked home.

The day wasn’t quite over yet, I made it home for short while before heading out for a paddle with the TeamCP kayak group. We had a good session working on technique and power. No mini adventure luckily, one was enough for the day. Unfortunately not much study was achieved other than attending class.

The ride didn’t quite go to plan but was a good training session and fun. It’s the things like this that are what make training interesting and fun. The reasons I love training and racing is because it’s lots of fun, sometimes comes with adventure and because of some of the small but exciting moments, like reaching the top of the hill and the awesome places it can take you. 🙂
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