Time flys when... Yea right!

It's less than 3 weeks till the rage. Yep, on the 21^st of this month we will set forth from soft beds and comfort food somewhere near the top of the South Island and head to Hanmer in the middle of the island via 106km of rough as guts track with rocks and rivers and dreaded hills!

So, training continues... I'm still commuting daily by bike with the occasional static bike ride, Logan is doing static rides and together we're doing stupid long, hard or fast rides around the area.

Sprint training is a horror. Static training is almost as awful. Both make my legs scream as we do them, and my muscles ache the next day. Which is worse? Well sprint training is slightly better, but only because hearing Logan crying behind me motivates me a little more. When doing training on the static bike, the only crying I hear is mine. When we're doing spring training, knowing that Logan is suffering at least as much as I am gives me added strength.

So, last week we did the sprint training; just over an hour with 30km+ distance and 7 sprints thrown in. Awful, just awful. Today however was a nice, peaceful ride to and around Bottle lake. It was warm, and wet, but mostly clean, and there have been repairs to the track, so areas which normally ate the tandem were easily ridden. A nice day out.

It speaks volumes that way back when we started riding together, a ride through the singletrack of Bottle lake would have scared the crap out of me, and left me drained and exhausted. Now however, it's a gentle weekend jaunt, a ride we do just to turn the legs over. The 8km-each-way leg is just a warm up and cool down not 'the ride'. The 15km ride through the forest and singletrack is done in one hit, not in several stages with tea parties to break it up. We're chatting not gasping. We're having fun, relaxed and riding fast, not spinning in a low gear with every muscle tensed. It's good. It's fun.

So, why the hell do we sprint? Why the static bikes? Why do we not just amble through the countryside, splashing through the occasional puddle and having a jolly old time? Because that's not why we started doing this in the first place. Any man and a monkey can ride a tandem, but it takes a certain amount of lunacy to do it fast, to do it on a mountain bike and to do it up and down hills. The pain we suffer now means the tracks and trails later seem easy and can be enjoyed. Each hard ride we do sets the bar just a little bit higher. Each sprint we do sets it up another notch. And each hill we take on sets it even higher again. Today's ride was a testament to that.

So, Rainbow Rage, I am ready for you mentally, and over the next few weeks will be making sure I'm ready for you physically too! We'll be doing hills, up and down, gravel, mud, rain, hot, cold, grass, sand, stone and more, so when that day does roll around in the very near future, we'll be ready, and we'll knock the bastard off, and head away happy and victorious!

Please note: if we fail to complete the rage, or have a miserable time, I reserve the right to delete this post.