It can't get much better than this.

Get smashed in the Pandan Waterfall, then ride home. Czech it...

Continental Drift

Just off the coast of our resort there is a small bit of land called Snake Island, and the first thing I thought when I saw it was swimming there!

This is the Island

And this was the swim! Don't give me any flack about the nice straight line, it was kind of rough out there.

It's only 1.1km over there, so I went back and forth a few times and was joined by my sister once. I got the garmin on it, here was one of the return trips

This is the island when we got over there, which is home to a few monkeys that only came out as we were swimming away :(

I'm not sure how many people knew/heard about this. So for those this advertisement concerns, you can put them away now okay? :)

Thanks to the few who have left comments in the post below :)

Some stuff on my time in Malaysia is on the way.

Annual Blog Awards

Okay so I'm going for something different with this post; let's just call it the Triathlon Blog Awards 2010. This should be a bit of fun, and I'm hoping everyone will get involved.

One of my posts recently received a comment from David Sweeny of the Running Masters blog, which went something like;

      "Hey Man with such beautiful Post's as this and so little comment from your readers perhaps you need to get your blog out there a bit more and advertise what your saying because it is really worth reading"

I'm not going to lie, I started this blog to get a bit of exposure, a bit of support, and maybe a few fans. I don't really know if any of this has happened at all, so I'm going to see what you all think. So, bring on some feedback, and maybe a little bit of fun sledging :) Do some research of your favourite athletes and look at the blog rolls on the sides of peoples pages to get the who's who of the triathlon blogging community. Hopefully myself and other readers can come across some other good sites (I'm obviously going to have a big ITU bias), and I'll add every new site I come across on my feed to the side.


I've made a list of categories below, and the idea is for people to vote for their favourite triathlon blogs in however many categories they choose. Make up your own category even. You can leave your name or post annonymously!

The prize is pretty much limited to benign cyber respect.

Categories

1) Best Blog/Content

2) Wordsmith

3) Hardest Hitting Entry

3) Most Sporadically Updated

4) Biggest Blunder

5) Shortest Lived

6) Most Sponsors Listed/Best Subtle Sponsor Plugs

7) Most Repulsive Entry

8) Worst Spelling



Merry Chistmas everyone, I'm off to the tropics of coastal Malaysia for a while :)

Time in the Saddle

Not too long, but long enough for an olympic distance athlete. We had a great ride this morning, same loop as 2 weeks ago over Mt. Glorious and through Fernvale. The ride was 5:25 pedal time, with 146km total including 2.25km of vertical ascent, and 40degree temperatures in the mix. Essentially, it's a hard 146km.

This is the loop, click on it to see the ride on Garmin Connect. I said it's the same as two weeks ago but I'm telling a little fib, but more on that soon.



This section is where most of the business is done. Brutal in parts, but very very beautiful riding. This is the Goat Track and Mt. Glorious climb. Around the back of the mountains you can see our water supply, Wivenhoe Dam. We actually do a perennial Esk loop, which is this loop but around the dam, which is 220km total. We haven't done it this year yet, so I guess it's not really perennial anymore. I'm okay with that though.

Okay so then you will notice in this section we did a bit of a dog's leg.

How many times do you do a ride and have to turn around because the road is flooded? Well today was one of those rides, with Mt. Crosby Road taken over completely by water. Not wanting to get my ipod wet, I was okay to pass on the swim across the rapids with my bike on my back, my shoes still on my feet and my jersey pockets acting as drag nets :p

So with my new Edge800, we sought an alternate route which had us land here, in this primitive part of the world where bridges haven't been invented yet. Yes,  it's a barge crossing the river to service traffic.

 

So that's today's ride in a nutshell. I wont go into details about all the grumpiness and wack theory Campbell and I had to put with when Jack Walgers talks.

I will be posting something monolithic (in blogging proportions) in the next few days that will require involvement from everybody, so come back soon.

Josh

Yesterday I had the pleasure of celebrating Matt Hopper's and Melissa Trims wedding. Matt raced 4 seasons as an Australian ITU elite, and represented the Australian elite team at the 2007 Hamburg Worlds and 2008 Vancouver Worlds before his retirement, in which he finished a solid 23rd. Mel also raced internationally, but not quite at the level that Matt got to. These two newly wed athletes, and most of the crowd at the wedding last night have had a pretty big influence on my upbringing in the sport. I spent most of my early athletic years looking up to Matt as a pro on the circuit, and most of the other energetic age groupers in our great squad formerly under the guise of the once-great coach Brendan Terry. So it was great to catch up with everyone at the wedding, specifically one of the guys I used too look up to in sickening (OMG this guy is really fast)  proportions, who goes by the name of Lee Mounster.

Most people probably wont know Lee, but he raced a few world cups back in the day before quitting at age 25 around 2003 I think. One story that comes to mind about Lee is from the Syndey World Cup in 2000, and while I can't 100% confirm the validity of this story, I can put it together in patches. Lee was in a break with Chris McCormack on the bike until they both crashed riding down the horridly steep Maquarie Street (spelling?), which is the street Jan Frodeno crashed on in this years race a decade on. Chris busted his front wheel in the crash, whilst Lee busted his rear wheel; thus only one of the two could continue the race if either of them helped each other with a true wheel. I think Chris ended up bullying Lee to the point where lee gave up his front wheel to the front-wheel-less Macca to avoid a fight, as to which Macca could then continue the race. Someone correct me if this is total bullshit, but this is what my young and impressionable mind remembers.

Anyway lee passed some wisdom over to me last night over a Cascade beer, which happens to be a beer from a Tasmanian brewery that he grew up 5 minutes away from. We firstly had a good chat about beer, and when the Cascade thing came up I think that's when we started to get cozy. He told me that despite not really ever achieving the success in Triathlon he was hoping for, he wouldn't change a thing, and wouldn't change the outcomes. Lee ended up quitting the sport because he had had enough of the gypsy-college student lifestyle, and went on search for a normal life pursuing perhaps far more financially rewarding pastures. Lee now sells luxury cars and is quite successful, living on mountain top real estate. Nevertheless, Lee will be the first one to tell you that he didn't pass the 10th grade at school after he dropped out with no qualifications. But ultimately,  Lee tole me that his recent success in business is all owed to Triathlon. He explained to me that Triathlon is the equivalent of a degree. It teaches the things that a degree teaches; although not the gritty information, but rather the value and experiences gained after finishing a degree. He told me that Triathlon taught and facilitated everything he knows; honesty, integrity, determination and above all, commitment. In every little detail, Triathlon is a sport that you need to commit yourself too, and if you can come through at the other end saying that you truly applied yourself 100% to try and achieve your goals, then Lee believes you can achieve in life. Triathlon was Lee's education, and there's no reason the same can't apply for all us all.

Now that that's said, it's time to go do that session I've been putting off in rain soaked Brisbane.

Josh

 Ash and I

Alan Moran, Anthony McSweeny, Matt Hopper, Myself

Sea Change

I don't often blog about swimming, but a few recent changes have compelled me to. I have decided not to go back to my normal tri squad with Shaun Stephens, and have decided to pursue my own agenda. I'm the kind of guy that is way too competitive, and I didn't think being in a squad environment was really benefiting me. The last 5 years I had been training with Shaun had been dedicated to simply beating everyone else in every training session. It took me 5 years and a average season this year to realise that this way of training was quite counterproductive, and that I need to be doing things in my own interests to get to the level that I know I can reach. So for me, training a lot smarter is now king, and I have started doing sessions in the places I have always dreamed of (Brisbane is a really great place to train, you just need someone who knows where the good stuff is!).

On this new agenda of mine is  a small swimming squad at Brisbane Grammar School, coached by young genious David Lush. Lushy is my sister's ex-boyfriend, so if you read this Eloise, sorry but he is a good coach. It's an amazing pool complex in inner city Brisbane, it's only 25m but has the widest lanes I've ever swum in. It's a nice change, and one that is getting me motivated to get back to my top swimming ability, which I haven't really seen the last 2 or so seasons. Here's this afternoon set, which was good fun....

If you click on it and read, it's a time chart for a set of 28x50m on 1:30. You get to pick your level, then just do the times! I picked level 5, which started off with 2 50's at 28.5, then 6 on 29 etc etc. The times get rounded to the nearest half a second, and if you miss one you're in trouble! Fun set :) Level 5 was easy, but level 4 is crazy. 2x27.5, 4x28, 4x28.5 etc etc. Maybe some day, but not this time of year! I'm enjoying 150bpm and below way too much to even think about that.

This is another new water playground of mine.

I've started training with Courtney Atkinson on Mondays, and this is his back yard. A giant freshwater lake in suburban Gold Coast. You can do 1km reps from end to end, or 4kms straight around the perimeter. Training is too easy when it's this accessible! 


I'm also half way through my level one triathlon coaching course, and could be interested in taking this further is anyone is interested. 


Lastly, this interesting and impromptu package came in the mail today from this Canadian athlete. 

When I saw cookies on the customs declaration form, I had to check it out. So apologies go to my girlfriend Ash, she is furious another girl baked for me. Cookies from Canada, from another female = major bickery. I find this really funny, so sorry Ash for when you read this.


Take it easy,


Josh

Further mileage will now be accrued with the Edge800. Get amongst it!

I still need a powermeter though!

Milage will now be acrued in the Lunarfly. Love it!

Majesty 1.0- Fernvale Loop

Amazing 5 1/4 hour loop on the bike this morning with the crew up in the clouds, finished with a breakfast at Jimmy's 'you should have a party here' house. Czech it...

155bpm on heartrate monitor = anaerobic dog!!!!!


Click 'view details' to view the ride in Garmin Connect

Filing Cabinet .03

Some news coming soon

Filing Cabinet 0.2

500km Relay

This is by far one of the greatest events I have ever done, and this is my team, Victory Sports. This events is monolithic; 11 teams, and 500km of pavement to cover in three days through a beautiful pocket of rural South-East Queensland. This is the third year I have done the relay. The first year I did in back in 2008, we had a great team to compete against and we only won that year by 8 minutes, which is pretty close over 500km of running! The last two years, we have been relatively untouched, and won by 4 hours this year. However, to our team its not so much about the competition, but rather about the great friendship and the love of running. You just hit the pavement and go, and don't stop until you see the cones and your next runner waiting. I ran 6 times, and did legs ranging from 3.7-5.6km. I think the shortest leg you can do is about 2.4km, whilst the longest is 6.6km. There are also criterium events every day which are mass starts, and each team must field 6 runners for each. I did the criterium in Toowoomba at 5am on Sunday morning and managed to win in windy conditions which I was very happy with. The last 2 legs of the relay are a similar format with 6 runners from each team, but this time are just straight out slogs along a dirt track called the Rail Trail. I managed 3rd in the last leg after a sloppy sprint finish to two very quick runners in my team. Anyway this was a great event with great company, I love it and will be back every year! Here's some digital manifestations...

From the Garmin filing cabinet;

(to view these files in metric, there is a button up the top right of the screen)

Leg 1, day 1

Leg 2, day 1    *stoked with this one (downhill stage)* max speed is a little out, accidentally hit the button once back in the car

Leg 3, Day 2

Leg 5, day 3 (Toowoomba Criterium)

Leg 6, day 3, (Rail Trail)


And the physical memoirs;