If there is one person who I can always rely on to have a good time with, it is my housemate in Wollongong David Mainwaring, known to many people as ‘Mainy’. While it was nice to return to my hometown of Newcastle for a few days and catch up with friends and family, most of my time on my break was spent in the ‘Gong’.

As it was the month of ‘Movember’, a 30 day period where thousands of males grow moustaches of all colours, shapes, lengths and thickness to raise money for men’s health, Mainy and I joined the ‘Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies’. A team led by Shane Barrie and primarily made up of Australian triathletes. It is always a nervous time of year as it is a real test of manhood but luckily I was able to grow a pretty decent ‘mo’ and the team raised $7,000 for men’s health.

So imagine two 24 year olds hitting the Wollongong night clubs on a weekly basis with fresh moustaches, a lot of fun to be had! This is the only time of the year it is possible to go out, have some drinks, a late night and multiple dates with the Colonel at KFC without having to think about training the next day or a race in the upcoming weeks. After 4 weeks of forgetting my triathlete traits, I was getting a bit of an itch to train so I knew I had spent my break well.

I left Mainy in the ‘gong’ to fly solo for a few days as I made a quick trip to Melbourne to catch up with the team at 2XU Melbourne and Giant Australia who are a great bunch of people and have supported me immensely over the past few years. Melbourne always comes with the added bonus of great cafes and coffee sits that can last for hours.

Before heading to our yearly altitude camp in Falls Creek we made a visit to Katie Slattery at NSWIS for a VO2 max test. 4 Weeks without training its fair to say the test wasn’t pretty.

Everything is all-good up here in Falls Creek, training is going well and I can feel my fitness coming back slowly.

Until next time.