ECNZ07 Day 3

Epic NZ 2007 Day 3 – run, swim, ride 228km Hanmer – Moana

I’m glad I didn’t write this up yesterday when I was done. I needed a couple of beers and a good nights sleep to help put the day in perspective. If I had written it up then my blog would have looked like this:

5:15am – wake-u, coffee, 2 crumpets with honey

5:48 – run easy 50 minutes in rain, drink my big salty carb drink

6:50 – hop in van, drive to pool, swim 3km as 12 x (100I.M., 150 f/s)

8am – drive back to eat, pack, get rain gear on

9am: crank up iPod on old Rock playlist, ride to Moana – 228km with lots of cool rain and hills and climbing twice over the southern alps. Stop 5 minutes at 50km for drink, stop 20+ minutes at 100km to change clothes and eat, stop at 145km to eat, get coffee, fix Brandon’s under seat bottle cages that were rattling off, stop at 190km for drink, finish ride at 6pm very f…..in relieved to get my raw ass off that f…n bike seat.

7pm: beer and dinner at a great restaurant with great people! and life is starting to get good again and memory of f….n miserably wet ride starting to fade…

9pm: stretch while watching Red Zinger/Coors Classic DVD’s a buddy and France Epic camper Ed bought for me for Christmas. Sweat dreams…………

Now that I’m writing this the following day the above still looks very accurate, but my mood has improved. I always tell myself that the one thing you can change about reality is your attitude towards it – your perspective. And even though I did remind myself about 1,000 times yesterday that I’d rather do this stuff than a million other things………. sometimes the pain in my body gets the edge in the attention battle for prominence in my brain.

As we continue to get up day after day and continue to do Epic days my hope is always that its get easier to accept the fatigue and discomfort and start to get a deep feeling of confidence in what we’re all capable of.

There were a couple of casualties today. Its very hard to hop in a van to get a lift when everyone else is out there continuing the struggle to meet the challenge, but sometimes illness or injury get the better of us. Hopefully those guys will re-group soon to get back out there.