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6 June 2004: A Wish Fulfilled |
| I can't believe how lucky I have been with the weather back in the UK... I had arrived fully equipped with winter training gear and have been running out of cool clothing! It has only rained for one day and that was the day I only had to swim and run, so it worked out well. It has been nice to get Mum back into swimming again and she has been coming with me to Sudbury pool every morning for the 6.30am session and I really appreciate the company. It has taken a while for us to be accepted, everyone there seems to have their set position to swim in and didn't appreciate having some torpedo turn up and start carving a lane up the pool! Luckily we found a few allies after a few close scraps which my Mum had to break up, and they now save me some space by the lane rope. As if swim training isn't hard enough! |
The view from the window at home in UK
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| Training has been going really well and I had a couple of big days over the weekend with my first 2hr run in ages and a hard 4hr bike but I felt great which was encouraging. It definitely helped having the beautiful country lanes to ride through (see right). It is exciting to be beginning to start a long course campaign again ready for IM Canada at the end of the summer. I had a bit of a scare on Monday as I was meant to follow a bike time trial with an interval run but after two intervals my calf cramped up. This was really weird as it was the opposite calf to the one that sometimes causes me problems after hard runs. I ended up having to walk and jog slowly home and apply lots of ice. I took a conservative approach with my running for the next couple of days as Powerman Italy was fast approaching and it thankfully paid off as I did one final speed session before the race. |
Our cottage
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| I have always wanted to visit Italy, so I jumped at the chance of racing there when I saw the date of Powerman fell when I was over in the UK. I wanted to try and do a race while I was over there to help pay for my trip and the race organizers had been really good helping me with accommodation and some money towards my flight. Fingers crossed I wouldn't let them down and would have a solid race for my first proper Duathlon (run/bike/run). My youngest sister, Hannah was going to fly over and join me a day later so it would be fun to spend the weekend together and have some support at the race. The race was in Parma (yes, that's famous for the ham as well as parmesan cheese) which is about 130km from Milan, so we could take the train. The flight is just under 2hrs followed by a 30min bus trip across town to Central Station......about time to test out my Italian phrasebook! My accent obviously wasn't up to scratch as I ended up lugging my bike and bags onto a train with only minutes to spare before departure, to discover I had been sold a ticket to another Italian town. CRAP.......everything came piling off the train into a heap on the platform with me jumping after it as the train pulled away. One of the difficulties traveling on your own is the bike box.....it becomes incredibly hard to do simple things like use the toilet or get into a travel agent up some steps to buy another train ticket. After finding a friendly shop owner to look after my bike, I was able to buy the correct ticket and sit down to wait for the train. |
My sister (Hannah), her boyfriend (Carl) and me enjoying the garden
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| The train journey took an
1hr30 and I must confess I was disappointed by the scenery but hopefully
this would change once I got into the countryside. I was soon
facing the next obstacle of traveling with bike box in tow.......lots
of steps down and up to get from one platform to the exit. It
looked like the race organizers weren't able to collect me, so I piled
into a taxi and headed to the B&B. After leaving home at
7am, I finally arrived at 6pm - so much for a quick little trip over
to Europe! (View of one of the many town squares in Parma above).
Thankfully, I was completely exhausted as we were right next to the train line but I could have slept in the middle of downtown Central at lunchtime! It's always so much easier when you have done a race before as you know the lay out of the town, race site and course especially when everyone speaks another language. Luckily, there was another girl staying in our B&B who was racing, Tamara from the Ukraine and we headed off to find the race course and register. It was nearly a 30minute ride out the other side of town to the University, which hosts the race but the view of the mountains was worth the ride. We ended up hanging around there for 2hrs, so we could get a lift in the car round the bike course, which was meant to be very hilly and technical plus we wanted to collect our numbers and avoid coming back again that evening as our only transport was the bikes. |
Caption here
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Well, the course lived up to it's reputation but was so beautiful and there was still some snow on the mountains in the distance. We climbed up, down and through tiny little villages perched on the side of the mountains... I couldn't see anything that didn't look more than a couple of thousand years old and the weather was gorgeous. This was going to be a great course and I couldn't wait until the morning. After a quick trip to the bike shop to sort out a loose cable and another game of "Give us a clue" to the old boy in the shop, it was back to the B&B to hopefully meet Hannah who had just arrived by train. We found a cute little restaurant that evening and sampled some of the local pizza, calzone and WOW, how good was the parma ham......I don't know that I can go back to the stuff you buy in packets now! By the size of the portions, I certainly wasn't going to be running out of energy the following day... Full race report here. Cheers Claire |
View from transition towards the mountains we rode in during the race
Mum & Dad enjoying tea in the garden
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