After a perfect start to the ICME on day 1, I was very cautious in my approach to this morning’s stage 3.

Dry weather for the Stage 3 start was a welcome relief

I have done this race enough times to know that there is a certain weight on the shoulders of the yellow jersey wearer and that disaster can strike at any time at Alice Springs due to the rocky and rough nature of the trails. Having said that, the spirits of the bunch were high as we headed out for 49km of cool trails as the sun made an appearance for the first time since most of the racers arrived on Saturday.

The 200 riders rolled out from the Old Telegraph Station at 9am and it was Ben Hogarth who set the pace early, before an early break of Andrew Hall and Kyle Ward established itself off the front. For Shaun and I sitting first and second on GC, we were happy to let these guys have a dig and we rolled the odd turn with the others just to keep their advantage less than a minute.

As we approached the first technical section called “The Roller-Coaster” (basically a rut, an awesome rough singletrack rut) I went to the front and tried to lift the pace a bit. When we bottomed out in the sandy creek bed, the break was back in sight. Shaun was on my wheel and things felt like they were in control…then I realised my rear tyre was going down.  I set about fixing it and, being still quite early in the stage, I had heaps of words of encouragement and offers of spares from other riders as they came past.

After I got going again, things became a bit of a blur. When you are chasing back from a mishap it is really easy to panic and go too hard, especially when you are in the leader’s jersey and you are desperately trying to limit your losses. I tried my best to retain composure but I was pretty cross eyed as a gradually made my way through the field. It gets harder and harder to pass riders as you get closer to the front but I made steady inroads.

Mentally I was buoyed by the knowledge that Shaun would be in the front group with no obligation to do any work and would therefore be a great chance to take out the stage. I passed Ben Mather on the side of the track fixing a mechanical. It was a really bummer for Ben, and he eventually lost 15 minutes.

For me, on the other hand, it meant that there was one less strong man driving the pace in the front. On the final bitumen climb up to the reservoir with a few kilometres to go I was catching third-place Ben Hogarth and at that point I caught a glimpse of Shaun and Michael Crosbie out the front of the race.

Michael Crosbie with Kyle Ward (186), Crosbie rode well to secure his victory today

Although I would surely run out of track to catch them, I was now confident that I could retain the jersey and I was sure Lewi could beat Crosbie in a sprint.  I crossed the line in third place, less than a minute down and enough to keep the jersey. Unfortunately for Shaun he suffered a flat tyre with one kilometre to go and had to ride in on the rim, leaving Michael Crosbie to take a well-deserved maiden stage victory.

Michael Crosbie is featured in the new issue of Enduro, in the Gear Chat section of the magazine, all 193cm of him.

At the time I am writing these words, we haven’t had a chance to look at the GC results but have been able to work out that, but despite the problems, the stage actually worked out well for the Swell-Specialized team. I’m still in the lead, just with a smaller margin to Shaun in second, but with the issues suffered by both Ben Mather and Kyle Ward (who broke a seatpost) we have put time into some of the other main contenders.

I have to cut this report off now because we are actually off to take a joy flight over the MacDonald Ranges. But before I run, I also have to report that Rowena won the women’s stage over Jenny Fay again, but with the big stage tomorrow suiting Jenny, the battle for the lead in the women’s race should be interesting.

All photos :: CHLOE GERAGHTY

For full results   www.ICME.com.au and for the live updates from all of the stages.

Packing for the Crocodile Trophy is a matter of trying to anticipate all possibilities and problems that may crop up

After nearly six months in the planning the start of the Croc Trophy is only four days away. The build up had been going really well until a major chest infection put a big dent in the training and it was touch and go whether I would be able to get back to training at all before the event. Thankfully I rolled the dice and got back into training early into my second round of antibiotics but was careful to stay out of the red zone. Gradually the legs and chest came good and I managed to put in a reasonable, if not stunning, last few weeks of training. The day before heading off to Cairns I had a spill at the You Yangs and took a lot of skin off my shin. Unfortunately that would mean a lot of care and attention to prevent infection in the tropics and even worse meant I had to stay out of the water in Cairns.

The sinus infection that accompanied the chest was refusing to go away and I feared that my nasal polyps may have returned. And I was right. A short course of meds to shrink the polyps and I was back to feeling good again and left the sinus infection in the dust. And dust is what I will have to contend with over the next few weeks in big doses. The weather here is oppressive and so glad I came early for acclimatisation – for mental and physical reasons. Been great hanging out with Wynne and Sarah at Mission Beach despite having to spectate the swimming activities from the sidelines…

On the bike preparation front most things are looking set but a few nagging issues. I have had issues with one of my new tyres which is hopefully resolved. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that my hydration set up (triathlon cage mounted on the seat post) is simply not going to work. The bottles go flying any time I hit rough stuff so I may have to revert to plan B (bottle in back pocket) or plan C (camelbak), or combination of the two. I really want to avoid the camelbak given the heat and the fact that it cannot be refilled during the race and that it makes it hard to access food in pockets. I will sort that out over coming days. My new wheels are with a bike shop in Cairns as I had trouble getting the tyres to hold pressure on them but apparently they are looking OK… I have decided that I will probably carry a spare tyre for all but the most mountainous stages where I will want to keep the weight down. Will be sharing a room then tent with Jess Douglas for two weeks and there will be some very weary late night and early morning conversations no doubt…

Big thanks to Enduro Magazine for getting me on the start grid and huge thanks to Bicycles Inc in Melbourne and Giant for hooking up the new 29′er with full XTR. The rest I now fear is up to me.

The weekend's results were a big confidence builder as they demonstrated that the training program is yielding solid results

Training is one thing, but there is nothing like a race or two to provide an insight into how the preparations are going. When the Mawson Marathon was cancelled I earmarked the same weekend for a couple of `form finders’ – races that would provide a more accurate gauge of where I was at. It was important that I did two races back to back for several reasons. It would:

1. Help to mimick the backing up required by the Croc (10 days in row)
2. Provide me with a clearer indication of how my body responded to racing while fatigued
3. Provide me with a simulation that I could properly assess whether my nutrition strategy was going to work

The two races chosen were the St Kilda Cycling Club Championships and Castlemaine 6 Hour Enduro.

The club champs is a big race – 80 odd starters and a very strong elite field. There were probably a dozen guys not out of place in big State races and 20 others with good pedigree. The 100km race was reasonably flat and windy and suited me. It was clear that 02 were the team to beat with half a dozen guys capable of winning the race. My advice to teammates (VeloBourne who are Giant sponsored) was to avoid any break that didn’t have one O2 guy in it. I went with a few moves early and was attentive, knowing the crosswinds meant position was critical. The big move came at the 45km mark, with five or six guys coming together up the road including and O2 rider. The guy I was marking was Duncan Smith from O2, who is strong and smart. When I saw him bridge across to the group I knew it was my moment. I couldn’t quite get to his back wheel but managed to bridge across five lengths behind him, and apparently a few other guys had also managed to get across.

We were 12 in total and worked well initially. Importantly the three big teams were represented – two from 02, two from Sole Devotion and Pikey and myself. Predictably, there wasn’t a lot of urgency or cohesion in the chase and as we worked strong turns the time gap increased. We weren’t getting any time checks but it eventually reached 5 mins. The guys in the group stepped into it on a few occasions and 5 of the original 12 were dispensed. After some cat and mouse for the last 5kms and a few big attacks we were altogether for the final uphill sprint. I decided to mark Duncan Smith again and it was the right wheel to follow. I couldn’t get over him though, or Aaron Salisbury who took the win, but opened up a 50 metre gap on fourth place to claim a podium spot. Very satisfying day considering I’m in the middle of a hard block of nightly indoor trainer sessions.

Backing up next day was always going to be hard. A 1.5 hour drive to Castlemaine, six hours on the bike and the return trip was brutal. Not to mention scrambling to get on a 9pm flight that night to Sydney. The race was the first I had done of this length with no real food – just bottles of Torq electrolyte and Torq gels (8 of them). Apart from a poor second hour the race went well and I managed to ride myself into fifth spot in Elite behind some good riders. I was most satisfied that the nutrition plan had stacked up for the two days – the only change I will make is a few less caffeinated gels. I was getting heart palpitations going up the hills towards the end! Big thanks to Steve for handing me bottles all day – has to be worth 5 minutes and not an easy task or a particularly relaxing day for him! And the Anthem was running like a dream thanks to Bicycles Inc – with that much climbing and that many technical rocky sections it needed to be!

In all a satisfying weekend and confidence that I am on track.

The joy of indoor training sessions

It’s now less than two months to the start of the Croc Trophy.  The form is building at about the same rate as my anxiety…

It has occurred to me over the past few weeks how implicitly you have to trust your coach when you are training for an event like this.

My program has featured a heavy focus on ergo (indoor trainer) sessions. These sessions tend to have the effect of flattening you before they make you stronger. In particular, the mega ergo sessions of two hours take a lot out of you and it’s easy to start panicking when you go for a ride and feel like you have got nothing in the legs.

As an example, I did a road race just over a week ago and felt like I had OK power but zero “zip” in the legs; there was just no spark there. Given the heavy ergo workload though, this is not surprising, but it’s difficult not to second-guess yourself at times like this.

In fact, I would have been second-guessing myself if I didn’t have a coach who had meticulously drawn up my program with a purpose and rationale behind every session.

The value of a great coach is that they anticipate all the ups and downs, the building cycles and the resting cycles.  A coach will prescribe workouts that you simply wouldn’t prescribe for yourself.

I tend to try to err on the side of under-training and if I am feeling run down I avoid the tough sessions. But as I know from my academic studies, to achieve the best results, you have to over-reach a bit in your preparation (or, in this case, your training) but not so much that you get sick.

Jess Douglas – my coach – proved that she knows her stuff in the lead up to the 24 Solo World Championships and I’m confident it will be the same this time around.

The week just gone, following my “no zip” road race, I put together my most consistent and highest-quality string of training sessions for a long time. I was even more pleased that, in addition, I was also able to get through both my 41^st birthday and a bout of giardia with minimal interruption to training. I only did 14 hours but all of it was quality. The highlights included:

1. Two hour ergo session – 10 x 2 mins (first min at 360Watts and second min at 380W), 8x 2 mins (340Watts), 5x4mins at 60rpm (300W) and a 10 minute escalating effort up to 400Watts for last minute
2. Hill repeats at the You Yangs – for those that know You Yangs it involved up and down Cressy x 2, up and down Lactic Acid x 2, up Lactic and down Trav’s x 2, up Vomit Hill and down Boulder x 2. This was followed by a one hour time trial through Kurrajong to round out the three hours.

On Sunday I did a bunch ride up Kinglake and clocked my highest speed on the mountain bike – 82.8kph – and climbed well. I had the feeling at the end of that workout that I had turned the corner from “rebuilding” to “improving”.

This coming weekend will be a real test, with the St Kilda road race Club Championships on Saturday and the Castlemaine 6-Hour Enduro on Sunday. I have managed to get some good advice from Dean at Torq Nutrition and will be trialling my full race nutrition strategy over the weekend. The objective will be to drink a bottle an hour on both days and a gel every 45 minutes. I will also be trialling the new recovery drink in between the two races. Assuming all goes well, I will get Torq products for the Croc Trophy (that’s going to be a lot of gels). I have no real result ambitions for the weekend that aren’t training-related, but want to ride consistently.

In other news I also managed to get to the Giant launch and eyed off the new carbon 29’er hardtail that I will be racing for the Croc. It’s still a few weeks away, but looks great. Accommodation and flights are also booked for Cairns so it’s feeling like a reality…speaking of reality, now I’ve got to stop poking these keys and set up the indoor trainer for a session.

The first two weeks of the official preparation for Crocodile Trophy have ticked the three big boxes:

1. The routine has been established
2. Motivation has been restored
3. The body is starting to respond

Multi-tasking is the key to fitting it all in, training and child-minding can work together

Establishing a routine

People often say about diets that you shouldn’t think of it as a diet, but rather a way of life. After more than six months of riding for fun and racing infrequently, the “way of life” or “diet” that I am following to prepare for the Croc is substantially different (and a lot less fun) than what I had become accustomed to.

In addition to the food, the day-to-day training routine has been a necessary shock to the system. The major elements of the routine that I needed to establish were:

• Early mornings and late nights – getting the training done, including the 3-4 core sessions a week – with my current work and family schedule means finding hours to train that are `unsociable’ – take, for example, 5:15 am wake up calls on weekends and earlier starts during the week. They aren’t exactly pleasant, or sustainable morning after morning, but they are definitely a part of the routine. It’s similar at the other end of the day, where it’s not unusual to complete an ergo session at 10:00 pm.
• Scheduled recovery. It sounds counter-intuitive but a demanding routine needs to schedule in time to rest, and to sleep.
• Scheduling food intake around both of the above. I have learned the hard way that a large meal before a core workout is potentially disastrous. Likewise an intense ergo session after a particularly spicy curry is potentially debilitating.

In summary, the routine has to be predictable and tough, but at the same time, sustainable.

Generating (and sustaining) motivation

I am generally a motivated person, but I also know that I am motivated by goals and success. One of the issues when you start a training program is that success and results are a memory rather than a likely short-term occurrence. In fact, during a program like this there aren’t any short-term successes to keep you motivated.

Thankfully, over the years I have developed the ability to turn poor results into motivation. One of my regular tactics is to go and do a hard race at the start of the preparation, which I did with the Forrest 6 hour a few weeks ago. It had the right effect – pushing me into action.

The challenge now is to stay motivated while I am under pressure in all other parts of my life. I find great and reliable training partners are perfect for this, and Jesse Carlson fits the bill on both fronts. I also rely heavily on my training coach, Jess Douglas, to keep me motivated and accountable. She does this naturally, and is always looking for positives even in mediocre weeks and average races.

In short, motivation can’t always come from within. If you accept that and get it elsewhere, it can help at crucial moments.

Getting the body to respond

There isn’t a lot you can do here except wait. The first two weeks aren’t going to see your threshold rise by 20% but I take positives from small indicators. For example, when climbing a hill I can notice that I can keep my upper body more stable under load which is a sure sign that the core strength is starting to kick in. Those incremental signals also help with motivation, and tell you that you are closing in on where you used to be.

In short, look for the little responses.

The Croc is now three months away. With a lot of hard work to do, I’ll keep you posted on my progress in a few weeks. Now I’m off for an ergo session….

A focus on quality of training rather than massive k's

Five months sounds like a long time, but for a race as long and hard as I expect the Croc Trophy to be, five months is nothing. The Croc Trophy starts on the 18th of October and a few weeks ago I started a 19-week training program designed by coach Jess Douglas.  This program is radically different to my program for the World 24 Hour Championships, on three main fronts:

1. A greater focus on ergo training and intensity (the typical session is an hour long)
2. A reduced emphasis on long road miles (not much more than 300kms per week even in a reasonable week)
3. A significant emphasis on core strength (three or four specific sessions a week)

The changes in focus are as much a reflection of the demands of my life as the the demands of the race. With our little girl Wynne growing up, almost weekly work trips to Sydney and a generally higher workload, I have had to adopt the `lean’ training program (lean in terms of hours, rather than long hours…which would help me get lean). This unfortunately means almost eliminating social rides without purpose, which are enjoyable but not the most efficient use of time. A typical training week for me will involve between 10 and 15 hours a week, compared to the almost 20 hours I was putting in on big weeks leading up to the 24 hour worlds.

The training has been officially going for just two weeks and the body is still struggling to come to grips with the emphasis on ergo. I have always been someone who pulls out a bit extra out on the road but have had a history of being positively soft on the ergo. I am gradually training myself to go deeper on the trainer, and I’m finding it pretty taxing. As an example, I did a reasonably hard session on Friday morning which made my 5.5 hour jaunt with Jesse Carlsson on Saturday positively uncomfortable. Jesse had me in the box within half an hour and I never got out of it… Still, great to get a 130km mountain bike ride (2200m vertical) in the bank.

The program is basically a slow build to the Croc Trophy in mid October, with two preparation races in there as form finders and motivation. The first will be an epic – the Mawson Marathon – covering 360km in a single day. Jesse and I are riding as a team (it will hurt) and expect a time in the 15 hour range. It’s not quite a 24 but it’s not a cross country sprint either. The second race is two weeks later and it’s on bitumen: the Midlands Tour. This race is perfectly suited to me – hilly but not mountainous and generally windy. I’m not necessarily fussed about the result of this race but will be a form indicator two months out from the Croc.

I have two weeks in Bali coming up – the bike is coming with me – so I’m trying to get some good base kilometres in over the next few weeks to ensure that I am reasonably well prepared for the Mawson.

My sister Sheridyn (pit crew extraordinaire at the worlds) is getting married on Saturday, but after that the social functions will diminish and the weight control campaign also begins in earnest. I am sitting at 77 kilos and aim to make it back to 71 by late October, which should be do-able with a bit of discipline (OK, a lot of discipline)….

The Croc Trophy is like no other race in Australia

Stay tuned for more updates as the weeks tick