Back to “Old School”

Midweek training saw a return to getting out in the hills for some 20min FTP style efforts. The other difference was the bike, MTB. I had a crazy late night at work Tuesday\Wednesday morning finishing up at 04:30. This got me the rest of Wednesday off. Outa bed at midday, worked through some ‘domestics’ then loaded the car up and headed to King Lake National park. Now purists’ of the MTB way of life would think that riding up & down a fire road is bloody boring and a waste of a trip, but hey it was my choice and that’s basically what I did. I'm just a roadie faffing around on a MTB. I’ve got the Kona 12hr coming up this weekend so it’s been ‘cram studying’ for most of my recovery rides this week on the MTB getting a feel of it again. Mostly out on the Yarra trails either before or after work. One thing I did noticed last night, that I haven’t on the Yarra Trails, is the way trail detail disappears due to parallax if you are running your up front lighting on your helmet. I think I still prefer it over handle bar mount. Old King Lake road turned out to be great. It took me around 21mins to climb from the Steels Creek rd turn off to the gate at the car park near Heidelberg\King Lake rd. The stats between these two points turned out to be 6.5km @ 4%. There's a gate at the 2km mark to get your dismount\mount action dialled in too. So it was two ascents at FTP type pace and the third with Amy Winehouse coming through the MP3 Player to keep the tempo a little more chilled.