day 1 proper

Day 1

The objective of this camp for me was to pull myself from the depths of unfitness to start my build for Roth in July. However on day one I thought I might be able to sneak into the yellow jersey if things went my way with the 2km swim TT, a sneaky 200 Fly bonus point and then see what happened in the bike TT.

I thought I started well. I did my 200 fly with ease then onto the 2km. The plan here was simply to set off at 1min20 pace and hold it. I figured this would get me 2^nd or 3^rd. In my lane I had Gordo tucked in behind me (Monica said I was giving birth to him he was so close) but I did manage a wry smile when he popped off inside the first km. Next to me was Molina who surprisingly dropped off a little but then came blasting by to take the win comfortably. I was holding 1:20’s with ease and couldn’t see anyone in the lanes across so just cruised. So when I touched in 26:40 (exactly 1:20’s) I was a little surprised to see Albert two lanes across with a Cheshire grin on his face. Then when the count back happened Tara took me down by a second (she’d left 10sec later than me and had been working in tandem with Rob Chance). The boys gave me some stick which has been noted. I pick and choose my times to compete and I’ll admit I’m a bad looser.

Off onto the bikes for the Christchurch classic ride of Akaroa return. It’s 2hrs flat, 2hrs very tough hills and 2hrs flat. I was a little late leaving for the 1^st KOM so was a bit down on where I should have been but I was OK with that. On the way back I started the climb with Scott M, Mark P, Douglas, Tara and maybe one or two others. One by one the guys dropped off and by halfway it was just Tara and myself, whilst we weren’t smacking it big time we weren’t mucking around. With about 2km to go I was thinking what to do. I wasn’t sure whether I should let Tara take it or would that just be patronising because she’s the only girl on the camp. I hummed and hared then with 400m to go I opened up the burners and pulled away. It just so happened that as I did this my wife and son drove past. I could just image her thinking why is John attacking a girl rather than giving her a break.

Next came the time trial. I inadvertently thought it was around 30km when I set the course and there were a few sour faces when it turned out to be 43km. The less said about my TT the better, basically I exploded within the first half and simply had to ride it in. Mark Pietrosa, who only arrived at 9am that morning from Hawaii took it which was impressive.

Day 2 has now been complete but again it’s late and I need to go to bed so I’ll write that one up tomorrow. Let’s just say the swim started at 6am and didn’t finish my run until 7pm!!! BIG DAY