Mental Breakthrough!!

OK, today was Mt Cootha reps.  I was supposed to do 3 last week, however I didn't want to overdo it with my new bike fit, so just did 2 loops.

The plan for today was to ride from home to give me an easy 30min warmup, 3 laps of Cootha and then ride in to work.

As we were leaving home I noticed that there were thick clouds lurking.  Being a fair weathered athlete I wanted to check the radar and see if there was rain coming, but decided to just tough it out and if it starts raining I can always stop.

Michelle met us at home, so Craig, Michelle and I rode in and we dawdled a fair bit and arrived right on 5 at Slaughter Falls carpark.  I waved to everyone and kept riding because Craig had kept going and I wanted to get a good start on the mountain before the rain came!

The first lap was good, I was feeling OK and I even managed to do a pretty good descent.  Very proud of myself and the lap ended up being 33mins - I don't keep a very good record of these things but by my recollection that is my fastest Coot-ha lap.  In hindsight that was a good time to stop the clock!

Halfway up the second lap it started to rain, it was just sprinkling, but enough to wet the roads and of course me.  I was thinking, well that's it - after this lap I am packing up and riding in to work!

The rain had eased by the time I got to the top of the hill and there was a slight breeze so I was wondering if the roads would dry out real quick.  So, I decided that I would make my decision at the turn whether to do another lap or not and it would depend on how I felt descending on the wet roads.

Just as I was about to descend it started raining again, this time a little heavier, so I crawled down at snail pace in the rain freaking out a little and making sure that I wasn't going to lock the bike up.  Heaps of people flew by me and I wonder where they get their courage from.  I think that I need a dose of courage, I wonder if you can buy some of that somewhere...

Anyway, I figured that there was no way that the 3rd lap was going to get any worse than that and I should just do it and continue riding carefully.

So, that is what I did.  I could feel water sloshing in my shoes, my glasses were fogging up (I do ride up hills slowly!!!).  I had to stop up the top of the 3rd and wipe my glasses with my wet shirt so that I could see where I was going.

But, all in all I survived!  So, I think that some sessions are great to draw on in the future and for me this is certainly going to be one of them.  It was not a particularly physically hard session, although some people would argue that 3 laps of Cootha is physically hard!  It was for me, more of a mentally tough session and one that I hope I can draw on when I am in doubt as to whether or not I should ride in the rain.


It took 30mins to ride in to Coot-ha, 1hour 40mins to do 3 laps and 20mins to ride in to work to give a total ride time of 2.5hrs.