A Whole New Playground!

I got into mountain biking as a way of exploring the hills around Upper Hutt and thought I knew most of the tracks.  The weather on Monday didn't inspire me to ride on the road so I thought I would try a track I had heard about even though it is just around the corner.  It's the section of the river trail from Twin Bridges to Te Marua bridge that goes through a nice section of bush, some farm land (sheep grazing if you are lucky), through some more beautiful bush, then it pops out next to SH 2.  It must be one of Upper Hutt's best kept secrets.  What makes this piece of track really exciting is that I can now ride from Upper Hutt to the top of the Rimatakas mostly off road, perfect for the cyclocross bike!

Oh, as luck would have it, it is perfect terrain for me to run on which will see me doing some great adventure runs, maybe to the top of the incline, Mt Climie or even over to Kaitoke Regional Park via the Ridge track.

Pretty average week for training, Saturday saw me get smashed again in Break two. It was a real eye opener, I couldn't keep up with my bunch on the flat which obviously means I don't have any speed and rightly so because I have been concentrating on Long Slow Distance.  The silver lining was I banked a 150km/5hour ride and I felt fine when I got home.  The large bottle of coke Luke bought and shared may have influenced my state of mind though.

Below is my Sunday run along the track I mentioned earlier, the two dark shapes are the Twin Lakes.