Ballarat 3 Hour

Yippee yeehah I actually 'raced' at the Ballarat 3 Hour last week!  Finally I've got legs rather than legs that fade whenever I point them at a climb.  

The course was a great fun, flowy course.  Nothing hard or technical - just a matter of how much speed can you carry down the descents and through corners.  There was a fair bit of climbing each lap - 270m elevation gain over 12 km, with the start lap having 370m elevation gain - which took it's toll on everyone eventually.  As usual, I knew the climbs were my weakness so I hammered the descents as best I could to make up time.  Some of these were so much fun that I couldn't contain my jubilation and just had to let loose with several vocal 'woohoo'.

The first 1.5 hours was spent pushing a bit but not too much, expecting the usual nothing on the climbs.  But when it came to putting in a bit more on every climb on the 3rd lap, I actually had some legs.  Then the 4th lap came round and I wanted to finish with nothing in my legs, so I pushed every climb HARD.  The final 25 mins my glutes were screaming at me, but I just kept pushing on everything - I never gave up.  

It was so good to feel pain again in my legs - to push into the pain and actually enjoy it - rather than just having nothing on the climbs and just having to tap away while my legs just faded.  It was a HUGE step for me - it's been 2 years since I've had any legs, and I'm determined to not lose them if I can help it.  Of course work will get in the way, as it already has, but I'll do my best to keep on the bike and keep up the fun, because I love it so much.