Monday, April 6, 2009

Race Time!

One of my new years resolutions was to become a better blogger… Oops.. As you can see I’m not doing all that well so far. But I guess better late than never right?? Now…where to start?!

After Clearwater it was so nice to be able to spend some time with my family. I came back to Oz and decided to live with my brother & sister in law for the summer so that I would be able to spend some time with my little nice Mackenzie. I absolutely love this kid – she is so adorable, I didn’t even mind the early morning wake ups smelly nappy changes or anything. It was also nice to be home for the arrival of two new nephews. My sister Colette and her husband Murat welcomed their first baby Kaya into the world on the 7th of January then two weeks later my sister in law Tammarra and my brother Warrick had little Patrick. I have some photos below of the 2 little monkeys. I guess you could say my summer in Australia was mostly spent hanging out with babies and I loved every second of it. Of course when I wasn’t changing a nappy or reading a story I was out training. It was so nice to have a few months without the stress of travel where I could get in a block of base training.. Something I neglected to do last year by diving straight back into racing in early Feburary.

This year I had the end of November off then used December to ease back into it, I then had the whole of January and February to enjoy some nice long base miles.. One other thing I have done differently this year is try out a new training tool – Powercranks!!! These things are so freakin hard.. I got them put on my bike on the 1st of January and my first ride consisted of a lot of single leg drill over an hour wind trainer session then another hour lying on the floor in agony. My hip flexors had no idea what had hit them. This sort of thing lasted for a few weeks, with relatively minor increases in distance with each session and a number of phone calls to my coach asking if she was sure this would make me faster!! It took about 5 weeks before I could do any quality at all, but by my 7th week I was really starting to see the improvements, I can now say that I am a firm believer in this product! I am back on normal cranks now with the odd shorter ride on the powercranks to help remind my legs how to pedal correctly. I definitely feel like I am riding stronger than I ever have before .. But I guess the true test will be how well I ride in my next few races?

Speaking of which, my first race of the year will be next weekend in Oceanside. It’s shaping up to be a great race with some really fast chicks lining up. I am looking forward to testing out my body and see where I am at in terms of strengths and weaknesses. I am also quite excited to be riding my new cannondale slice. I picked up my new baby last week from Nytro. I have a very good feeling about this bike! If you would like to see some photos below is a link to an interview I did with triathlete mag a few weeks ago.

http://triathlon.competitor.com/features/qa-with-mirinda-carfrae-the-world-champ-is-setting-her-sights-on-kona.html


Oh and I guess you may have gathered by now – I am back in the US, at our SoCal desert training base, I arrived here on the 1st of March and will be here till late April when I head over to St Petersburg for st Anthony’s tri and St Croix 70.3. I am thoroughly enjoying being back in training camp with Siri and the new group – I have 2 of the best roomies – Sam Warriner and Hayley Peirsol. It is amazing how much more enjoyable training can be when you are surrounded with such great company.

Until next time..
Happy training
Rinny J

2 comments:

Ramon Serrano said...

A blogger has born! Nice job! ;-)

TRI-ROB said...

Holy CRAP! Are you SERIOUS??? An actual post from Rinny? I'm in SHOCK... and extremely pleased!

Keep it up...

and...

Breathe...