Epic NZ, Jan 9th

Woke up early. Slept real good last night. I think I might be close to 95% freshened up after my little illness.

Looking around the room last night at our briefing there are some FIT dudes on this camp. It will be interesting to see how things play out over the course of the camp.

OK, each day (if I remember), I am going to dedictate the day of training to someone -- a pal or someone else that I've either found entertaining or learned something from.

So today, today is KP Day.

Kevin Purcell is a guy that I meet about six years ago. He's come along to every Epic Camp that we've done over the years. The return leg of the ride that we are doing today is similar to the ride that we ended the first ever Epic Camp. With one exception, today, we don't return over Long Bay Road.

I'm sure my account of Long Bay Road is somewhere on the Epic Site. It is a climb that even had the Baron swerving back and forth across the road. KP was sitting on about 170+ bpm for most of the way up -- not because he wanted to, but because that was the only way to get up.

As he neared, what he thought was, the top. He saw all of us waiting and poured it on for a big finish. Admirable except that he had about another 10-15 mins worth of climbing along the spine of the crater. I remember smiling to myself and telling him, "great finish but we're only about two-thirds of the way up". His smile said it all.

Kevin loves choosing the hard way. In fact, as an advisor to him, I spend a lot of time trying to convince him that he needn't always choose the _hardest_ way. It's like that with a lot of my high achieving athletes -- I spend a lot of time dialing them down.

At Epic, we have a policy that everyone has the right to do as much, as hard, as often as they want. So we won't be dialling anyone down.

Of course, I hope the guys realise that Bjorn and Bevan are only along for the day. Last year, I spent a day on Mister A's wheel and never recovered.

Oh yeah, in that photo are Chris McDonald, KP, John Mergler and Clas. KP was training with a couple of <9 IM guys and a Top 5 Kona finisher. None of us knew that at the time, though. What we did know was that we all liked to train, hated to quit and chose to head up Long Bay Road rather than take the easy way back to town.

More later.

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