Kelly Cycling Camp and Onwards

This past week was certainly an experience I won't forget for a while!  Helen and Bob Kelly who are my coaches were holding a camp in Bright, Victoria.  For those of you who don't know the area it is at the base of a number of mountains in country Victoria.  Not mountains by Canadian standards, but let me tell you after this past week they are "mountains"!  Not only did we have Helen and Bob coaching but also a friend of their's Bec.

Most of the riders at the camp were quite a bit younger...no lets say ALL the riders were younger with a few older riders!  Two of us were Para-cyclists, Hannah and I.  To say I was a bit nervous at the start is probably an understatement.  I was extremely worried that I would be left for dead on these rides and end up riding by myself.

We had arrived on the Sunday and our first ride was Monday morning at 8am.  It was going to be a fairly flat ride considering the area we were in and we were broken into a couple of groups.  I was going to be riding with Helen, Hannah, Ash and Alex (two of the younger riders).  We headed off towards Myrtleford.  We ended having a short stop in Myrtleford where we met up with the other group and then off we went again towards Lake Buffalo.  Before we reached the lake we were told to turn around and do a hard piece back to the bridge we had crossed.  Once that was done we were back riding together again.  Unfortunately Alex made a bad decision to try and pull a piece of long grass out of his front tire and got his hand caught causing him to fall, with Ash just behind him he ended up flipping over Alex.  I was behind both of them and found out just how good my brakes were on the new trike!  Thought I was going to go over the handlebars but managed to get the back tires down and stop!  Both boys had injuries but in the end they weren't too bad and both were able to continue for the rest of the camp.  One big lesson learnt...DO NOT put your hand in your front wheel while moving!

Monday night Helen and Bob had asked me to speak to the group to try and motivate them a bit.  I told the riders that there are 3 C's in life, that they were being given a Chance to make a Choice to Change something this week and that there were two words they must take out of their vocabulary...Can't and Never!  The best compliment that I got was the next night when one of the riders Cam told me that he had used those 3 C's and it had helped him during the ride.  It has been great getting messages from some of the other riders to say thanks for speaking to them!

Tuesday was probably the hardest day of cycling I have ever had.  Hannah and I were told to start off first and turn left onto the Towonga Gap Road. We had been told that we had a climb ahead of us on this day.  Wow what a climb it was.  For the first 2 km's I said to Hannah that it wasn't too bad, then we hit it...a 15km climb and I must say that the last 4km's of that climb were the toughest about 12%.  By the time we had reached the top we had climbed just over 2,139 feet.  I had been passed by everyone but I had made it!  The view from the top was magnificent!

The rest of the troups were cycling on but Helen told Hannah and I to ride back down and head back to Bright and then on further past to Porepunkah then turn around and go back to the hotel.  What a ride down!  I must say that age has made me a scaredy cat and I had my hands on the brakes the entire way down!  We did however find a good coffee once our ride was over.

That night we had a great time playing twister!  My god I hadn't done this in years and it was a competition to see who could last the longest.  During the last game Hannah and I became the last two and I must say that I don't think my body has stretched or twisted in those ways in a long time.  In the end I fell because I couldn't put my nose on a circle behind me!

The last day of riding for us and the under 17's was the Wednesday with an hour long warm up then a 6km Time Trial, then a ride to Harrietville which is just at the bottom of Mount Buffalo.  This would have been too much for me to climb and Hannah and I were once again sent back to Bright which was 25km away.  I know that Hannah was disappointed that she didn't get to climb Mount Buffalo but we have nationals next weekend and that wouldn't have been the best thing for us to try a week out from racing!  But it is there to be conquered and next time I will even give it a try!

It was a great few days and I got to know a lot of the riders the Kelly's coach and they are all great young people!  It was also quite a challenge for me and one which I came through pretty good.  It was hard but my body handled it by making sure I took care of it.  I went into this 3 days deciding that there were valuable opportunities to be had in the challenges of those 3 days.  I was living those three C's that I spoke to the kids about. I was given the Chance by the Kelly's to participate and as life is a continuous series of choices I had to decide what Choice I wanted to make in order to effect a Change.  My Choice was to make sure I gave myself every opportunity to Change the way I think while riding.  Focusing on the positives, like realising that I was conquering that climb, instead of thinking the negative thoughts about how much it was hurting. So instead of  adding to the difficulty of the climb with negativity I choose to transform that difficulty into success!

Now as I write this entry I am sitting in Caloundra, Queensland with nationals just a few days away.  Yes I have come up here early but I am ready, rested and raring to go on the weekend.  I have put everything into my training and now is the time to prove to myself that all this hard work has paid off!