lisa morgan

There's not much that makes you feel better as an athlete than seeing clear progress.  One of the positives of long periods of downtime is that you have a lot of room for improvement, and when that is the case you tend to make the quickest gains.  For some of us that's one of the very things that gets us hooked on things - the continual strive to break through ceilings and barriers and see where we can take ourselves.

I've been back on the bike for just a few weeks and mixing it up nicely between good saddle time on the road and heaps of fun on the dirt.  One of the first things I did was follow some good weather north to Rotorua so I could get some good hours in on both bikes without fear of drowning or being blown to the south island!  Shane and Jude were already up there and Charlotte and Tim travelled up at the same time I did.  Charlotte reduced me to a pile of whinge out on the roads and the next day I spent a brilliant few hours, despite the rain, in the forest riding heaps of my favourite trails in really slippery and muddy conditions!  The bonus was that a few hours in the sun meant my tan lines have started to come in nicely.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been continuing the solid roadie hours and have started riding with the Capitelle's on Monday evenings again - one of my favourite ways to kick off the riding week.

Yesterday was round 4 of the PNP series.  I did the pre-ride a week ago and enjoyed the course but was very much in two minds about racing.  It was this race last year where I over did the intensity for the first time in quick succession and I ended up suffering for weeks with a trapped vagus nerve, no way did I want to put myself back there!  I spent a good few hours on the road on Saturday with the expectation that I wouldn't be racing, but oddly enough when I woke up on Sunday with the sun streaming in I couldn't help myself and it ended up being a whole lot of fun.

Couple of pics from the pre-ride care of Davo Bushlove Aldred

After waiting for a bunch of the boys to pick themselves up out of the stream, showing the others how to stay upright ;o)

Couldn't have given the big cheesey grin and thumbsup to the camera if I'd ridden this one - beautiful scenery.

Contrary to what I'd expected with all the volume I've been doing, my legs didn't feel very fried, but I was able to find myself a great person to sit in behind to pace me for much of the race (thanks Rach).  On a couple of the climbs I went ahead of her but she always got me back, and had a bit of advantage getting over the closed fences being both taller and well experienced in doing so.  By the end of the last climb I was leading and still feeling good so I gave it some gas and ripped away to enjoy the awesome, technical singletrack descent.

Numbers were down and I came home in second which gave me an opportunity to say thanks to all of my fantastic sponsors, and more importantly I felt much better than expected and am simply loving riding a hardtail on all terrain types and in all conditions.

There's still a whole lot of work to do, but I'm feeling really positive about where I can get to from here.