The best of both worlds


Wollongong. The place I call home for 6 of the 7 days of the week. Living 1km from the beach at my home in Wollongong with the John and Christine O’Connell, I couldn’t ask for a better environment to be around on a day to day basis. Nothing beats jumping into 25 degree water to end the day to relax after a hard days training. Or jumping out on the surf board with John and attempting to catch a few waves! A big thank you to them for letting me in their family home for the next few months. My favourite is Saturday mornings when I get spoiled rotten with pancakes when I walk in the door from a hard ride.








I have been clocking up the km’s on the bike with the wizards girls and sometimes you even get a free mud bath to come with a long ride. People pay big bucks to get what we got off wheel sucking when it rains. ;) This ride is also one of my favourite and hardest rides of the week which is a 100km loop that involves QOM, some pace line efforts and mad mile to end the ride before some recovery on the way home. One of my favourite rides when I come home to Campbelltown is out to Burragong Lookout. No matter the weather or the off the chart elevation it is to get there, the view is always worth it at the top and so is the descent home. We have also started riding fixed gear bikes on the velodrome. It’s been a few years since I have ridden on one but once the nerves let go after a few laps, I am actually really enjoying having no brakes and do some fast pace sprints.
That one out of the 7 days of the week that I come home, I love having time to myself. Normally Sunday’s, I like doing some solo training or doing some specific strength work at home. Home is where the heart is and I love seeing my family, my dog and my friends when I come home. I couldn’t be any luckier that my home is only 40 mins away from Wollongong and I can drop by anytime I like to say hello and catch up with Mum and Dad.







My next race is this weekend in my home town of Wollongong for the Oceania Cup, then Mooloolaba World Cup and I am super excited to get a start in Auckland WTS!  It’s crazy how time flies as this time last year, I was planning my surgery on my hip. The biggest thing I learnt last year was that a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.  Time to get the 2015 started!! J

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two weekends. Two races. Two second places

Image
October is a month I really look forward to with two consecutive weekends of hard racing at home in Australia! I was feeling good leading up to Nepean and Noosa. I had a month of consistent sessions and I could see improvement every week especially in my running speed. This time of year I can train when I want and you certainly appreciate the skill involved in coaching when you are under your own guidance. I put old fashioned pen to paper to detail my training weeks and then set about ticking off each session. The morning of the Nepean was absolutely freezing. I had gloves, tights and headwear on just to keep warm and I was still shaking. It was a wetsuit swim for the first time in the 6 years that I have competed and I was glad of the added protection. The women’s field was pretty small and I lead out with five of us exiting the water together. I was a little disappointed with the swim based on how well I have been swimming but the cold was definitely a factor. In the fi
Read more

WTS Season!

Image
          ITU season overall Driving home from our caving experience in December 2017 with my previous psychologist Jason Patchell, we spoke about what I wanted to achieve this year and how I was going to do it. One of the main things he asked me was what I wanted to set as an overall series goal for the WTS series. After placing 21 st last year, I said a top 15 would be a good progression forward. He looked at me said " what about a top 10? " I tossed it back and forward in my mind wandering if It was a possibility. We finished that conversation with why not make it a challenge and how I was going to get there with other key processes throughout the season. One of my key themes for the year was having confidence in the whole picture. Starting my WTS season with a podium in Abu Dhabi really set the tone for the year and was a big driving force for my confidence and my ability to compete against the best girls in the world. That race was really a ques
Read more

WTS Abu Dhabi 2018 - my first WTS podium

Image
With Abu Dhabi on the horizon, I had 4 weeks of consistent training in our Woll ongong base with the knowledge of the demands that the race in Abu Dhabi would have. Building on training and confidence each week was a great starting base for the season. Doing some new sessions in our training environment in this year has lit a new spark giving me confidence back in areas that I had lost. On 16 th February I raced in Devonport Oceania Champs where I placed second after a full week of training. It was great to put processes in place under fatigue and get a full race under my belt. Race day threw everyone off guard with rain starting to fall and a colder air temperature. Abu Dhabi gets about three days of rain a year and racing on the F1 track was going to make critical moments even trickier. Before I even got to the race site, I was covered in sand, water and muck off the roads. I knew that having a good pre-race plan
Read more