On Monday morning I went in to the Austin hospital to have am umbilical hernia repaired - it was all very sudden and unexpected and I'm on very light duties for the next six weeks, no lifting, no DISC motorcycling (G-forces not good for it).  The good news is it was a routine thing, nothing drastic. Lots of opiates for me for a few weeks and gradual recovery.  Back into things in late December.

A picture tells the story well :

The dip in March was when I hurt my back (bulging disk between L5 and S1, compressing sciatic nerve).  I was all clear to start heavy lifting again around June, as you can see, I've been getting better since then, pretty consistantly.  I got Hilts to do a couple of MAC's for me on Saturday morning, and I got my best power figures for a very long time, I peaked at 1,479, my all time best is around 1,550, so I'm not that far off it, and around 10kg lighter.  I am looking forward to round 1 ...

I'm focussing a lot of us older guys who train in the Sprint Squad on legspeed and power at higher cadences, one way to do this is to do a motorpaced drill called a "windout", where, on a small (or at least, not a big gear) gear we follow the motorbike through a flying 200 windup, then a flying 200 entry line, chase the bike for a set number of laps while it speeds up at every corner.  This doesn't use up our power getting to speed so it saves us for high cadence high power work, where we rarely get to train without the aid of a motorcycle (or, on the road, down hills).  Last night our main drill was a 500m windout with the motorbike pulling off at 100m to go, the rider then has to try and accelerate (or, at least hold speed) for the last 100 meters.

That's what it looks like from the back of the motorbike ...

Here's my power meter data for one of my efforts from this session (I did 4 of them, all on 90").  As you can see, I am not very fast or powerful (and am even worse than I was last summer, but I have some mittigating circumstances!  Injury has taken quite a toll this year so far, but I am on the mend!). Compare this to the week before, where we just did windouts without the motorbike pulling off at 100 to go (ie: chasing all the way in the draft).  The power at the last 10 seconds is the interesting part.  Here's the charts :

	500m windout with rider unassisted for the last 100m
	500m windout with draft to finish

And here's the last month or so's overall power figures (it's a funny slice of a graph!)

  It's a long way down from my best (~1550 watts peak), but it is going up, and that's encouraging.  This is all post my back injury that dropped my peak power down to the sort of numbers an enduro would sneer at! (800 watts!  You must be joking!) ... As long as it keeps going up, as are my lifts in the gym, slowly but consistantly, I'm happy.  I have abot 5 months to get some speed before the next Summer Sprint Series.  Keep on trucking.

Where there's an orthopaedic issue, there's an engineering solution.  I present Dave Draper's  Top Squat

 Not since April 2010 have I been able to do a proper squat.  I've been able to front squat (sucks....), deadlift etc but with a SLAP tear and osteoarthritis in my shoulders the rotation of my arms was restricted (and still is and probably always will be) such that I can't hold the barbell properly.  But with this doodad I can.  Sorta - it's not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than not being able to do it.

So on Monday (still full of mental and physical fatigue after the Aust titles in Sydney) I got under the bar for the first time in about 9 months or so.  I only worked up to a lazy 80kg workset, the technique is a little different and there's a couple of tricks to using it (keep the thing LEVEL! or the barbell slips to one side, not ideal!) but in general it's a great bit of kit.  On Tuesday I had DOMS and that is good!

Yesterday I got to DISC early and Hilts gave me a couple of MACC's for fun.  I slapped on 96" to do 'em. Here's the graph of the last effort.  It was supposed to be 375m, with me riding the last 125m unassisted, but Hilts blew the whistle, which means keep going, and it ended up being 500m.  I think I found a new HRmax ... They are FUN! Hilton is a superb derny rider.  I have much to learn.

I don't generally like to write about bad stuff, and in the scheme of things, this isn't that bad - I'm not going to die ad I can do most things.  As some of you who read this know, I've had an ongoing shoulder problem for some 6 or so months (maybe longer, I can't remember now).  Anyway, it's pretty-much always painful, it catches, I can't rotate to squat properly etc etc ...

I've run the path through general GP's (NFI ...), misdiagnosis through GP's that should have done a referral straight away, to fixing a symptom; frozen shoulder, had two hydrodilations, that fixed the frozen shoulder, and lots of accompanying physio. 

Finally last week we had an MRI done.  Today I got the results.  I have a labrum tear, a reasonable size one.  May have been caused by any number of crashes, spills and other such rough and tumble stuff in the last year or so.  They won't operate to fix it because it's in a shoulder that's got osteoarthritis.  Ie: it doesn't get better and there's no point - rehab for the surgery is ~6 months and there's less than even odds that it would be any better.  Other things listed include a bunch of placebos and "this might work" stuff and various painkilling drugs, and a shoulder replacement.

Basically I'm paying the price now for playing contact sports for 20 years.  C'est la Vie.  I'll be 40 this year.  Wear and tear is catching up.

Totally off-topic, sorta ..

I had another hydrodilation on Tuesday, which was quite different to the first one I had a month or so ago - it felt very different anyway, although the procedure was the same. I now have almost a full range of motion, which is great! I did an ergo session on Thursday and put out a peak power value that was the best I've done since January, so that's good. The things you can do when you can actually pull hard on the bars!

But... Today Lucie and I, tipped off by Stewart Lucy, took one of my kayaks down to the Box Hill rugby ground!

While the joint sounded and felt like a bag of ball bearings being rattled around, it didn't hurt.  Good! So this arvo I'm off to paddle the Homestead Loop on the Yarra, it'll have some big water in it after all this rain.  That'll test out the joint!

My melodramatic shoulder saga continues.  My new doctor at ASM (David Bolzonello, Sandra Mejac buggered off to Delhi to work at the Comm games and then on a holiday, hmpf! Where are her priorities?) is sending me off for another hydro after some x-rays showed no bone damage in the joint (good, I think? I don't have any spurs or arthritis, I KNOW THAT ALREADY! We wasted another week checking for that ... ). My physio there, Kay Copeland, is baffled although she delights in digging in to various bits of me with a lot of force.  We get more RoM in one plane, at the expense of another.  Robin Hood treatment? 

Anyway, they still think I have scapular capsulitis or "frozen shoulder".  I had a hydro about four weeks ago on the thing and immediately had a significant improvement (I could sleep! W00t!), but it's regressed and I can't ride a bike with any sort of power (not that I have much anyway, but even less than normal!), can't squat properly and at the moment, can't really lift much either.  I'm kinda useless when it comes to doing useful "stuff" like lifting and carrying things, putting rollers away in Hiltons' loveshack etc.  Not. Happy. Jan.  Even just trying to do some practice skills work at DISC tonight wasn't working.  I'm getting quite cranky about it, to be honest. In the overall scheme of things it's minor, it's not going to kill me or anything like that, but it is pissing me off!

Sooner or later, I'll bet they're going to get me to have an MRI on it, but they keep saying "no, no MRI needed, that's if the hydro and physio doesn't work, and don't question us, we're the experts here" (rough paraphrase).  In the mean time, I'm shelling out dollars while they make guesses.  I dunno... I'd like if they'd just order an MRI and stop guessing.  The hydro is booked for Tuesday arvo at Victoria House (where I had the last one done, maybe they'll remember me?), and then there's another 4-6 weeks of followup physio before we really know if it's sorted.  Here's hoping, eh?  Bloody thing .. This winter and spring have seen some great water in the rivers, can't paddle them with a b0rked shoulder.  The joys of getting old I guess.

On Sunday at our regular DISC training session, we did K1's for the sprinters.  I had a little help from Rachael Matties who started putting data into sprintTracker for me.

Here's what the data entry form looks like :

 This is only a small part of this application, but it's the one that will get the most use - we will use it to add data into an SQL (sqlite3 at the moment) database for all our sprinters times.  Yes, it doesn't do power (yet).  For now my goal is to have it able to store all our training data from both aboc and NTID Sprint sessions and allow us to analyse rider performances quickly.  Just getting the data into the database is the first step.  Once it's in there we can query to our heart's content.

So I've been busy - the application is written in a programming language called Python, using a GUI toolkit called wxPython and a database/object orientation toolkit called SQLAlchemy.   I'll be using matplotlib to generate charts and graphs, but that's another toolkit I have to learn to use and it'll take some time to get something useful out of it.  I'm very very rusty as a programmer, the last time I did any even vaguely serious programming was way back in 1996 and that was a horrid mismash of code at Westpac to maintain a DNS database written in Perl.  Ugly ... I'm not proud of it!  Anyway, sprintTracker will hopefully scratch an itch I've had for some time re keeping records of sprint performances that a conventional spreadsheet isn't powerful enough (or I don't know enough about!) to do.

Along the way I've had a shoulder injury that's kept me out of the gym, the doctors diagnosed it as a supraspinatus bursitis, which is an inflamation of the bursa (sort of like a bearing) around a tendon in my shoulder. It's sometimes known as a subacromial bursitis.  They (the doctors I saw) insisted I have a cortisone injection in the shoulder.  Cortisone is on the banned list both in and out of competition, and so I need to get a TUE for it, which is a pain in the arse but must be done if I'm to keep my racing licence.  Round 1 isn't that far away ....

On Saturday at Blackburn's regular track racing Emily had a spectacular tumble which resulted in a loss of a lot of skin and a trip in an ambulance.  Those of you that read this and know her will be relieved to know that she's not too badly banged up.  She's lost some bark and got some pretty impressive bruises and isn't the happiest of little Vegemites but so far, nothing major's shown up and she's in good spirits.  We're all very relieved for her, she's still gunning for the Vic Championships and the aboc family is united in supporting her.  Em's a very tough and motivated young lady and strong people are harder to kill.

This last two days have been mainly easy days, I lifted moderately heavy on Wednesday in the 'Haus (5 x 5 @ 150kg squats, 1 set of 10 130kg deadlifts, total tonnage 5,050kg) after Tuesday's spin session and on Wednesday night had a couple of short E1 rides for a total of about an hour and a half's riding.  Thursday was just an easy tootle to the LBS and back, no lifting and today was again around 45 minutes all-up E1 stuff. 

Tomorrow I'll lift heavy when I get back from the Baw Baw if I'm not too knackered from riding the motorbike out there. It's time to bump it up to 162.5kg squats again. I'll be trying for 5 sets of 3 reps, and depending on how that goes will up the deadlifts to 140kg.  130kg was hard, but I think I can manage 140kg for 10.  We'll see about that anyway. If it's not done on Saturday I'll do it on Sunday after Lucie and I go for a kayak paddle ... My arm's slowly getting better after the bursitis incident on Monday, I guess I'm starting to get old though, injuries take a bit longer to heal and mystery injuries crop up without explanation.

Speaking of lifting ... I'm a bit ashamed to say I was a bit bored on Thursday and watched a bit of 'the biggest loser' (the biggest loser is the person watching that rubbish... never again).  They had the punters all lined up in a semi circle with Olympic bars on their shoulders - except they weren't on their shoulders, they were way back off their necks on padding.  A big no-no when squatting heavy - it increases the moment arm around the lower back and increases the risk of lower back injury because to keep the weight over the lifter's feet they have to lean further forward, and they'll slump sooner or later and put a huge dynamic load on the lower back.  To make matters worse, they were doing it to failure and they were loading up the weights while the punters were holding the bars.  This made for asymetrical loads and twisting on the lower back as the 'trainers' (dangerous idiots) pushed the weights around while the punters were holding them up.  You wouldn't dream of doing that to experienced and strong lifters, let alone this bunch of untrained gumbies.

Could they do it in any more of an unsafe manner?  I'm not sure ... That was a pretty comprehensive catalogue of things not to do when holding a bar on your shoulders.  They got away with it ... But it was terrible.  So very irresponsible.  They should have had them progressively deadlift greater weights or something if they wanted to do something like that, at least a failure wouldn't risk blowing a back to pieces so badly. They'd just not be able to pick the bar up.  Shame on you, whoever came up with that stupid and dangerous stunt.  Lifting isn't a dangerous activity if it's done properly with good instruction from people who know what they're doing and with progressive and managed overload.  These idiots, on the other hand, threw essentially untrained people (who were no athletes) into a situation where they had to hold a (relatively) heavy weight in a biomechanically poor and dangerous position (padded out from their traps) while it was loaded up to a failure and twisted and pulled while they were doing it.   If I did that to anyone I was working with I'd expect to go to gaol for gross negligence when they got hurt.

Anyway ... Tomorrow I'm off to take photos of the lads racing the Baw Baw, I'll be at Winch Corner where it's an ~20% gradient.  Good luck to you all doing it. Pay no attention to the chalk writing on the roads! I've also been in touch with the bloke who built one of the AIS's sprint training ergos (the 'Wombat') and arranges wind tunnel testing - watch this space, we may have some slots to get into the tunnel and test sprinters for aerodynamics.

13 people turned up to ride with me tonight at Blackburn for our first spin session for the winter of '09.  The lazy, fat sprinters did :

2 x 10s HCLR:2

3 x 10s MAX sprints:5 (2nd one seated)

2 x 10s HCLR:2

The enduros did E2's and E3s etc for 90 mins, lazy sprinters, 40 minutes.

My first MAX I hit a new PB, and a significant one.  My previous highest wattage was around 1387 back in September '08, I got a 1473 watt peak tonight.  Woo Hoo!  Almost 100 watts more than last year.  The bursitis didn't seem to be an issue on the bike, which was good.

This afternoon, after a morning's moping about, Dino and Em came over for their PowerHaus session.  I had to give it a try.  My target; 160kg squats (5 x 5) and 120kg deadlifts (1 x 10).  Got 'em!  4,000kg squatted, 1,200kg deadlifted for the session for a total of 5,200kg lifted. Em and Dino also PB'd volume (squats) and intensity (deadlifts).  A good session indeed for all involved. Now it's protein time!

While I was moping I made some new chocolate-chilli icecream, this time with 86% dark chocolate.  It's in the freezer and I'll try it tonight. Mmmm....

I wasn't watching the Roubaux last night, I was sleeping.  I woke up at about 2am, with a very painful left elbow. Painful enough to wake me up and I sleep through anything!  Huh?  I don't remember hitting it on anything or doing anything odd or unusual.  The kayaking wasn't hard and doesn't involve much elbow bending anyway.  It felt like a nasty bruise on the outside of my elbow (the bit you can't see).  It was hot and very tender to touch, and no matter how I moved it would not stop hurting.  Hrm.  Got up, checked the 'net for a local doctor who was open on a public holiday. While I was at it I checked cyclingnews for the result, no luck again for Big George Hincapie, but Tom Boonen ... wow.  Three wins for Tom. This morning I trundled off to see the local quack (open on a public holiday, good-o).  He takes one look at it and says 'Bursitis'.  Huh?  What's that?  He gave me a script for some anti inflams and an antibiotic (the heat, probably an infection).  It's ok to use it, he says, but not if it's painful, and it should be ok in a week.

Not a bad time to get an injury I guess, next weekend I'm going to take photos at the Baw Baw and this is mainly a strength phase of training and I think I'll be able to squat and deadlift without too much trouble. It's more annoying than anything.  On the way back from the quack Lucie and I stopped in at the local stupormarket and grabbed the ingredients for tomorrow night's first spin of the winter.  The clubrooms are probably still jam packed with junk that we'll need to move out to make room for everyone. At least with a dodgey elbow I can get everyone else to move things!  Small victories .... Ha!

Fast Eddie Wilson's busted a collarbone at a country xmas carnival, with what looks like a decent compound fracture.  Get well soon Eddie!

I managed 5 x 5 @ 157.5kg squats on the 26th of Dec, which was good. They're getting really hard towards the end of the work sets.  I'm going to do one more set of 5 x 5 at that weight before moving up to 160kg.  I extimate my 1RM to be around 180kg at the moment based on doing sets of 5 and using tables from Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning.

According to Mark Rippetoe's charts in PPfST, at my weight, 108kg (237 lb) for the squat, 396 lb (180kg) makes me a very strong 'intermediate' lifter, close to 'advanced', so I suspect at least in terms of squats, I'm now strong enough, and need to start to really focus on power and leg speed, which means standing starts, rolling jumps and lots of motorpaced high speed work. My cleans are pretty feeble and my technique is terrible at them, I may need to shift focus onto them in the 'haus too, and get some guidance with them from Anthony Dove at the Mermet early next year.

My shoulder's improved, I did a couple of k in the pool yesterday with no discomfort, including some sprint work, so that's a good sign.

We're going to be heading off to Mt Sterling for new years with mountainbikes for fun and to check out the rumours of some new XC mtb trails. After that, it's only a month 'til round 4 of the BSSS and it'll be more training on the bike than in the gym, I'll probably drop back to 2 days a week in the Powerhaus and more cadence and acceleration work on the bike at the track.   Dino's setting himself some new goals and I have to do the same, I've done one of my season goals, which was a sub 13.5s flying 200 at Blackburn.  I'd like to be able to ride a 13.2 there and sub 13 at DISC by the end of the season, in time for the Blackburn club champs.  I'd like to win a few more (so far, only one!) rounds of the sprint series, I qualify well but haven't been successful much in actual match sprints, which is a bit disapointing, but it'll come with more speed I expect.

Everyone else is coming along very well, Em and Krissy are getting stronger in the powerhaus and it's showing with their track times. Dino's flying, Nath's off at the xmas carnivals doing wheelraces etc.

I'm relieved, after a couple of quite painful days hobbling, today my ankle felt ok, ok enough to consider a strength session.  In the mail on Monday I received my new video camera (Sony VX2100), and then today, a tax refund cheque, a new book (Might as well win, by Johan Bruynell, famous for directing US Postal and Discovery to 7 Tour de France wins with Lance Armstrong and one with Alberto Contador) and an invite to my old school's 20 year reunion.  Along the way a very frustrating SCO UNIX install in VMware finally started to behave itself a bit.  Not a bad couple of days, despite the hobbling around and missing training at DISC on Sunday.

So when I finally got a spare 30 minutes, I put on the lifting shoes and headed out to the Power House. I've put some lights in at last, and can use it when it's dark.  I had a go at some unweighed squats, and felt ok.  Warmed up on a few sets of 20kg, 60kg and 100kg.  Felt good.  Ok, we'll try for 5 x 5 @ 142.5kg .. got 'em!  Work set tonnage was 3,562.5kg.  My form wasn't 100%, so I'll repeat the lifts at the same weight on Thursday, but I'm happy with that.  I didn't have time for any other lifts.

I didn't leave myself much time to recover from the squats before tonight's spin session, I finished in the Power House at about 5:50, and got picked up to be at Spin at 6 (thanks Bev!).  An hour later, warming up on the bike with a healthy turnout at the spin session, we had 18 of us tonight, that was good.  I quickly found that while I could clip in, clipping out was not so pleasant, twisting out of cleats with an ankle sprain .. heh .. ouch.  Enough moaning .. I managed to hit 1332 watts in the first 10 second max effort, not a PB, but ok, given the closeness of the squat session.  I might have a play with timing of that, to see if different times between strength work and bike work has a significant impact on peak wattage.  Had a bit of a chunder at the end of our lactate efforts, but more of a retch than anything chunky. No carrots anyway. They hurt, those efforts, lots of blood lactate, very high heartrate ...  We had a good session, the enduros all enjoyed, if you can call it that, their work for the night and there was enough food to keep even Tom happy.  Luckily Vanders is overseas .. he normally eats everything!  I'm sure he's a latent sprinter hiding in an enduro's body.

Everyone's gearing up to watch the Tour, there's a lot of home town expectations on Cadel Evans, who is going in as a favorite to win it. It's pretty exciting to have an Australian ranked so highly as a possible winner, whatever happens I'm sure he'll ride as well as he can and if the recent press is any indicator of the truth, he'll be graceful and decent no matter what the final result.  Many years ago now I was lucky enough to ride with Cadel for a few k's and while we didn't speak much, he was polite and a decent sort of bloke.  Camster and I were riding to watch a Bay Crit and tootling along Footscray Rd towards Williamstown, when we met up with Cadel and we rode the rest of the way together, as four of us (Cadel was riding with a friend).  Back then I was a half-decent B grade flatland roady and we (Cam & I) worked the front of our little bunch to speed Cadel to the crits as he was running late. It was kinda fun to be his domestiques for a few k. We'll be camped on the couch for the tour, cheering him on and also seeing how well the other Aussies go, Robbie again, who seems to have hit some form just in time, O'Grady of course, and even Baden Cooke is back, one to watch for as a bit of a dark horse in the sprints.  Bring it on, and go Cadel!

I got my strength work done this morning and was happy with it and looking forward to going up a gear tonight at DISC.   Then, time to do some coaching. Just after I had my human guineapigs in the Power House doing squats, dumbell presses and lunges (and they did evry well, both are rapidly improving their technique), I had to go and feed my real guineapigs.  I have two runs, one out the front and one around the back.  I had a big bowl of chopped carrots for them.  I usually feed the front ones first.

I stepped off the edge of the porch and rolled my right ankle, quite hard on what was maybe a loose brick.  I thought I'd broken it at first. I called Lucie and she came out and helped me up and upstairs, and we've compressed & iced (peas!) it, but it's quite painful on one side, I might have torn something, if it's not healing in a few days I'll have to go see a doctor.  No cycle training for me tonight at DISC. I'll have to hobble around on crutches shouting at people.  I can do that.  Enforced rest, not what I wanted right now, but C'est la Vie.

I'm going to have to do something about the front run, I might have room to put them all in the back run, which is very big and has easy access, with no big stepdowns onto uncertain ground.  This is the second time I've fallen off the edge, last time I got a scare, this time, an injury.

To put it in perspective this is no big deal :

On Sunday morning my achillies was feeling ok, so I chanced it in the power house.  Did deep squats ok, then lined up the heavy stuff for some 1/4 squats.  Not such a good idea ... felt the twinge on the 2nd rep, and that's it for squats for the day.  I did finish the session with some lunges and bench, but was Mr limpalong at DISC on Sunday evening.  Hoping it'll be ok to use tomorrow if I keep the weight low. Today I've been hobbling around.

I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised at the success that the Hawthorn Sunday Roast session is having.  I caught the last hour of their races and they had a very healthy turnout of riders and it seemed like a pretty good race.  The Llama was shattered before he did our session, but still managed to burn some more matches when we took over the track. It was great to see Mason, Mick and Will come along, Mason to see what it was all about, and Mick and Will had some fun and did some laps.  Nath's getting a lot of fun out of his new Hillbrick, he's thrilled with how stiff it is.

On Saturday we trooped off to watch the Olympic weightlifting trials for selection for Beijing, it was pretty exciting at times and the crowd really got involved when the lifters were doing big efforts.  I took the camera but it was very gloomy in the stadium and even at 3200 ASA my camera wasn't letting in enough light to get any reasonable shots.  I do have media passes sorted for this Thursday's 'Revolution 3' though, and it should be better lit.  My lenses are cheapies and they chew a lot of light.

Hopefully tomorrow someone from Trek will (finally!) get back to me on the sponsorship for the Summer Sprint Series.  I've been nagging them to make up their minds for a month now.  We need to get it squared away so I can start to promote the series properly.

Some personal stuff's been keeping me occupied and unable to commit to meetings with riders over the last week, but we're hoping that things will settle down in a few days and life will return to some semblance of normality.

We're hoping also to get some carpooling happening for more races etc, Blackburn's running a multi-day tour at Eildon in early July and it makes sense to share cars and fuel costs etc.  Let me know if you're interested.  We should really have a carpool section of the website to make it easy to arrange.

I haven't done any running for a long, long time.  Way back in 1996 I played my last game of rugby, over in Perth for UWA, and then I busted a knee and decided running sports weren't such a good idea (busted the knee ski-ing, not running).  It's day one of the strength and conditioning course, and we're outside, and the drills we're going through are speed drills.  These guys are all running sports people, so .... it's running stuff.  Ok, I'll give it a go.  We do a few bits of some agility drills to 'warm up' (if you can call it that) and I do ok at them, old rugby instincts still work for playing tag.  For an old bloke with no running in his legs I'm not disgraced.  Then it's time for speed drills.  We do some rolling start efforts, running along at a jog then sprinting for 40 meters, walk back and repeat.  I'm not the fastest of the group, but feel ok.

Then we do 6 x 6 second standing starts on the 30 I think?  Something like that anyway.  I'm slow at these, close to last of our group, and getting some fatigue in muscles not used to working this way at all.  During one I get a small twinge in a quad, but it's ok.  Last one .. and about 5 strides in I feel my left achillies quite suddenly.  Ok ... That's not good!  I don't think it's anything bad, but it is quite tender to touch down one side of the tendon and walking (and stairs!) produces a bit of a limp as the tendon hurts when stretched.  I can get almost a full range of motion out of it and it doesn't feel swolen, and while I could ride last night at DISC during our warmup I didn't want to push it with any sprints so I ran the session from the floor, and gave the guys some time behind the motorbike (who crashed it?  It's bent!  Very unsettling to ride ...).  It's sore today but I'll take it easy for a few days to see how it goes, with some regular stretching etc.  So no lifting tomorrow I think, I'll just do an easy set on the rollers to tick my legs over for a bit.

We did catch the last 20 minutes of the HCC 'Sunday Roast' at DISC on Sunday, and saw Shane using his Summer Sprint Series honed sprinting skills at the end of his 120 lap race to win it.  I only had time for a brief chat with the V-Train but he seemed happy with how their racing had gone and was pleased with the turnout.

Also on Sunday the aboc MTB team rode at the second Chase the Sun enduro round and aquitted themselves very well.

Not much other stuff to report, the S&C course was good, but I felt a bit lacking, although once I get the workbook finished etc I'll have the qualification, it's really only L plates for a S&C coach, the information was covered quickly and with not a lot of depth, and the practical stuff was rushed and I think quite incomplete, but it was only two short days (9-4ish on both days) and there was a lot of material to cover.  Dean Robinson was our course lecturer and he's currently the S&C person for Geelong (AFL) and has a background in of all things rodeo riding, as well as both codes of rugby and weight lifting.  Quite an interesting bloke.  Very passionate about what he does. I think the level one cycling coach course better prepares a prospective coach for actual work in the field, despite being more general, but maybe that's the nature of the beast.

Time to scour the 'net for good ways to treat a strained achillies ...

This morning's velodrome session got skipped.  A combination of overall fatigue, a bit of a cold, swollen knee and an injured left elbow means I took the lazy option and slept in today.  HTFU!  Yeah ... I'm off to see the quack on Friday to get a niggling elbow injury checked out and also get the knee looked at.  I had a reconstruction 11 or so years ago and it may be that it's starting to deteriorate.

Funny thing, the doc is less than 100m from home, so I just dropped in to make a booking, and my medicare card is two years out of date.   Shows how much I see doctors I guess!

I've got a few backed up training programs to write, so I'd best get a wriggle on, and if I feel ok, will do some weight training with Vanders this evening and maybe jump on the ergo for some HCLR and/or sprints.  Suck it up and see what happens ...  Club championships are this weekend, and I'd like to get a sprint result worth writing about.

I still haven't ordered the extra weights for the Power House, got to find a spare $250 for 80kg of ballast.