Pre-Seasons Greetings

Spirits of the season be with ye, kind readers. My gift to you is one last blog before yuletide, placing it neatly in between toe-socks and a knitted sweater featuring an animal of some description, in terms of how treasured such a bestowal should be received. 

South Golden Beach is done and dusted for another year, and was 3 weeks in the trenches grafting hard. Thus having capped off a big 3 weeks, at the end of a big 3 months, I’m having an easier week over christmas, and taking the opportunity to spend some quality time with the family, and more importantly, the Christmas Ham.

Unlike last year, which featured more casualties than Saving Private Ryan, this year was mercifully devoid of serious wounds, save for the paintball excursion held on the final day. Seemingly my paint-balling skills would sooner have me playing the role of “Rambo’s Cannon Fodder”, rather than Rambo, in any future triathlon-related action blockbuster. Consensus among the group whilst licking our wounds was, fun though it was, we’d stick to shooting our mouths off, rather than carbines. 

The 2 smallest arms in triathlon, in a battle of the biceps, pre-swim 

Boxy politely smiling, despite my fatigue induced insanity

Skill Tester - session was 4 x 5 reps, on the 2 minutes, max effort

Readers of the preceding syntax may have detected a slightly objecting tone in relation to the overload of precipitation in the first week. Fortunately, this disappeared for the second week, as did our bikes one evening, as our house fell victim to a ‘theft’. Victims of a low brow ‘gag’ from our training partners, who were evidently ignorant to whom they were trying to play a joke. Quickly getting the coaching staff onboard, the squad was informed at our next swim set that the police would be coming around to gather evidence, and interview our cohort for information. The culprits promptly turned paler than the cast of Twilight, and amongst more spluttering than the muffler of my Falcon. Quickly admitting to more guilt than the News Of The World trial, order was restored, although one of the bumbling thieves revealed his desire to maintain innocence, and dump our bikes in the nearest sand dunes. 

Amid racking up more ‘K’s’ than Kris Kristofferson’s biography, we took the opportunity on the camp to make some real progress on refining our technique and execution in skill based areas. Unfortunately for our triathlon careers, this revolved more around the Chocolate Factory Skill Tester, rather than any triathlon discipline, however we were fortunate enough to be tutored by Olympic Gold Medalist Sara Carrigan, and so we improved on both our cycling, and chocolate grabbing efficiency throughout the camp. 

In the idle moments between sessions I invested my time in writing improv songs with Jack, outsourcing blame like a multinational outsourcing labour when getting beaten on the Playstation, sampling Gentle’s baking products and working on size-related witticisms with Mitch to bait Boxy with. 

Training was great, with some prodigious volumes of work completed by our athletic menagerie. Highlights included;

• 200km ride, the route and distance largely chosen so we could tell a joke about Boxy as we passed a landmark at Chillingham. Truth be told, it was a bit of a fizzer, probably not warranting almost 7 hours of riding. 
• Questioning the ingredients in our caramel slices, ingested at the decidedly ‘hazy’ village of Nimbin, after which an hour of impromptu, and somewhat unnecessary time-trailing proceeded. 
• Claiming the only untimed 50m effort of a sprint swim set was at least 2 seconds quicker than any of the timed efforts, and definitely faster than anyone else went all morning. Felt faster anyway. 
• Reveling in the superior tactics of the ‘Cool House’, after absolutely dismantling a vastly outnumbered Matt Brown, in the ‘Dash for Cash’ up the Mullumbimby hill climb. 
• Pretending not be scared by defiant kangaroos when running through Coombabah. Was seconds away from using Emma Jackson as a human shield. 
• Reveling in the superior tactics of the ‘Cool House’, after absolutely dismantling a vastly outnumbered Matt Brown, in the ‘Dash for Cash’ over 50m in the pool. 

And so, like all your christmas gifts, the camp has now been wrapped up, and hopefully the fruits of our labour will present themselves when called upon later in the season.

Take care friends,

Willy