What a month! If January is anything to go by, 2009 is going to be filled with some ups, some downs, some questionable tan lines and a few valuable lessons.
Lesson #1: If you are in a race and an old-ish, large-ish bloke with a fairly scant sense of chivalry (or alternatively, an extremely progressive feminist bent) throws his weight around in the bunch, tries to steal your wheel and then grunts in a non-complimentary way when you fail to yield said wheel, do NOT, under any circumstances, assume that he is a punter and try to drop him. He just might have been a really famous cyclist once.
Lesson #2: Sock length is king. The longer, the better. If it doesn't come halfway up your calf, it's just not cutting it. If it falls short, unpick the stitching at the top and pull it up. If you are in doubt as to appropriate sock-length height, consult your primary school yearbook circa 1985 and check out the nerdiest kids in the class. Now that's good sock length.
Lesson #3: Now that we're talking fashion, wear your glasses on the OUTSIDE of your helmet straps (so everyone can see the sponsor logos, duh). Not wearing your glasses on the outside is almost as bad as low sock length (see Lesson #2), and only slightly better than putting tri bars on your roadie and talking up how your new 40:30:30 training diet is going to lower your transition splits by, like, 2.5%.
Lesson #4: 'I'm busy peaking right now' is not an acceptable reason why you did not pay your car rego on time.
Lesson #5: Paddlepops are not a fruit. But you can still try for 5 a day if you like.
Lesson #6: Mango dacquaris are a reasonable, if unconventional, method of lowering one's core temperature. Even better, they mean that Saturday nights can now be logged as a legitimate training session. Hey, if electrolyte slushies were good enough for our athletes in Beijing, who am I to argue?
Lesson #7: Reading The Advertiser every day (for the unitiated, this is Adelaide's no.1 newspaper... or only newspaper. Whatever.) does not necessarily guarantee that will be on top of news and current affairs of the world. (Economic crisis? What economic crisis?) However, it does mean that you will have an unprecedented knowledge of lawn bowls results, Fred Basset and what Nora of Plympton South really thinks about pedestrian crossing signage. Reading The Advertiser's sports section also means that you can catch up on how brilliant the Tour Down Under was, which means another legitimate training session logged in the diary.
Lesson #8: You can have a rubbish race, and be down about it for a while, but then you move on and do something about it. And when you see the world news you realise that actually life here is pretty sweet, and that even though Nora in Plympton South is a bit upset about her pedestrian crossing signage, generally life has been pretty good to us.
Lesson #9: Don't fall off your mountain bike and break your arm! Especially when you are about to go overseas!! Get well soon Malcs and heal quickly in time for Kashmir.
Cheers
Lisa
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