Hi blog followers
Welcome to my blog as I continue my journey towards the Cameron Brown Award and IronMaori / Port of Tauranga Legend Series.
This week I have continued with Coach Ray’s training regime to get ready for the third event of eight for the journey. My arm appears to be all good, well getting there lol, as the week before last I managed to return to swimming with both arms, but wore short training swim fins throughout. This wasn’t so much for speed, but more for buoyancy. In the weeks training just gone, I ditched the fins and only used them for Coach Ray’s drill/swim activities.
Around Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge – So the third event of the eight for my journey. What can I say? Normally I finish an event and like all of us I have a smile that can’t be removed. This time I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great event and it wasn’t due to the normal muscular soreness of events, but medically I wasn’t feeling well from start to finish.
I woke with a slight headache and wrote that off to an uncomfortable sleep and the unit I was staying in. So I had a big breakfast a couple of hours before the start line and focused on getting fluids on board to take care of the headache. Once my group was moving forward to the start point I headed out from the shelter I was hiding under and joined them (I couldn’t see much point in adding wet to the cold). The race went off well and after a few minutes my headache returned. Great I thought. A couple of kilometres down and the whole Round Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge to go. It was only a dull pain so I convinced myself fluids will take care of it.
The rain let up after about 30-40 kilometres so things were looking up, but my headache wasn’t. I spotted an ambulance at a Support Station so hit them up for some Panadol. Turns out the Ambo was a guy called Simon I knew when he was in the Army, so he enjoyed giving me a bit of stick. The ambulance was warm which was a tease as it started raining again which would continue on and off – bugger! Simon told me the Panadol will kick in in about 30 to 40 minutes. Yeah nice one Simon it sure didn’t.
By now every bump in the road would ricochet around my head, and I just wished this event to be over. The best course of action was to hang on the brakes going downhill to ease the bumps. I found uphill and on the flats I was passing people which was probably as a result of Coach Ray’s training regime with the quad crusher training sessions (I call it quad killer). When going downhill they would race past me, so there were a few of us playing tag or cat and mouse the whole lake round.
At about the half way point I pulled up to another ambulance and got some more Panadol. By now the dull headache was getting worse, regardless of how much fluid I got down me, along with bananas and gels.
Once we turned off at Turangi, I just kept moving forward to the finish line – happy to see the distance signs count down. I crossed the finish line and was given a free Citrus 0% Beer. I normally stay to mix n mingle but my headache wasn’t letting up so I headed off and hit the shower with my other half shoving food down me.
Coach Ray’s text when I reported in tell him job done and how it went was “great resilience to push through with the headache in the cold wet conditions” which made me smile. Mel and my thoughts were, “I’m to stubborn to DNF”.
Take care team as I head to the fourth event of eight next weekend, being the IronMaori Half Ironman.
Regards John Humphries aka UltraHumps.
Humps will be writing weekly as he continues his journey raising funds for the Fallen Hero’s Trust
Read Humps’ article from last week here:
And all his previous articles are stored here:
https://www.coachray.nz/category/client-stories/ultra-humps/