One small step forward....

One giant Leap For Cycling!!

Firstly, ive switched clubs.

I thought about switching for quite a while and was going with this crazy idea that i could remain a viking and a siren and just train up here in Sydney and race back home in Canberra, but eventually i realised that the whole reason i started Valkyrie was based on the idea that its much easier to train if you have a group to roll with.

And i couldnt very well keep going up here if i stayed a bit of an outsider, so i took the plunge and transferred. Id like to think though - that its 'once a Valkyrie, always a Valkyrie'.

This morning was my first coached session with the new club Sydney University Velo or SUVelo for short and once again people were friendly. Actually they have a nice process whereby their
Membership officer gives the phone number of all new members to a liaison person who rings you to say welcome and answer any questions which I think is pretty cool.

But despite all we've learned as Valkyries and the millions of times I've said this to new Valkyries I still had the same old nutty ideas that all beginners have:

-I should just ride by myself for six months before turning up to training so I'm not the unfit/overweight/slow one
-It will be really hard and I'll never keep up
-Everyone else will be really good
-I'll be wearing the wrong gear
-People will notice me/think I'm a complete gumby

And of course each of these things as we know turns out to be just stuff in your head.

In reality:

-the best way to get fit is to turn up, it's more fun and WAY more effective
-the session wasnt nearly as hard as I'd envisaged (there's a reason I'm not the one who plans training sessions) and included a warm up, skills, climbin technique and (drumroll) hotdog turns
-being a session on skills, everyone was trying it for the first time
-people were friendly and said hi and I wasnt the only new person or the only one not wearing club kit
-golden rule for cyclists: they're all far too concerned with their own weight/hairlessness/leg definition/euro cool to notice how others look

I even survived the commute to the CBD after coffee - turns out there are bike lanes in parts of the CBD, completely separate from the traffic!

And best of all, I'm finally riding my bike again.

the little red corvette's new weekday home in my office in the CBD!

:)