the thousand steps

The Carmichael Training System’s intermediate level seven-week program (to the perfect ride) deems Mondays as rest (recovery) days. The logic escapes me, but beginner level rest days are Thursdays.  Advanced level riders get no rest. I work most Thursdays, but not Mondays, so Thursday is my rest day.

On this Thursday morning. I’m at the hospital getting my left wrist x-rayed. My good woman has come with me because the hospital is near the Ferntree Gully National Park. She wants to walk The Thousand Steps.

The forest is as beautiful as ever, the steps no less steep or slippery. It’s only 20 degrees but at the top I’m awash in perspiration; my heart rate recovers quickly.

Back in Bendigo later in the day I pass up the opportunity to do Thursday evening Pump class—it’s my recovery day—and do the Friday morning class instead.

Saturday morning I’m out early. My ride is a circuit around Bendigo’s outskirts. From Baxter Street I depart via East Bendigo, thence to White Hills, Ascot, Epsom, Eaglehawk, Myers Flat, Maiden Gully, Kangaroo Flat, Diamond Hill, Mandurang, Strathfieldsaye, Junortoun, Strathfield and back through Bendigo East. I cover 69.53kms at 28.2kph.

My current Bible, The Lance Armstrong performance program, features regular sidebars titled “What would Lance do?” I’m inclined to ignore them. Come on, the man’s won seven Tours de France. Only the most arrogant amateur would even consider attempting what Lance does.

Lance refers to any incline he can ride up in less than one minute as a sprinter hill. In other words, instead of grinding up the climb at a nice steady pace in a manageable gear, he attacks the hill and sprints up it. Lance, you’re the man.

Despite the name, White Hills is dead flat. The first serious incline is Lightning Hill. It’s like a small cube of vintage cheddar—it doesn’t last long but it makes you suck in the cheeks, arcing up to eight per cent. It’s a sprinter hill.

Not being Lance, I can either blow the hill away, or it’ll blow me away. I blow Lightning Hill to smithereens, then shrug off Specimen Hill, which strictly speaking is a bit longer than a sprinter hill. So is Diamond Hill, but I cruise it.

The whole ride I choose low gears and keep the highest cadence (and heart rate) that I can. Beyond 50kms it’s hard work but I keep the cadence in the high 70s and into the 80s all the way home.

The proverb says that the longest journey begins with one step. The French Alps remain a thousand steps away. Climbing them seems more like ten, twenty, fifty thousand steps.

The training began on 25 December, five weeks ago, but only now do I feel like I’ve taken the first step.