10,000km

Started the day with a bike ride with Herb. We rode from my place in Greenvale to his place in Essendon, had a coffee, rode back to my place and had a cup of tea. So, a very social, pleasant 40km ride.

Todays ride also clocked up 10,000km on my road bike, which I’ve had for just over two and a half years. Here are statistics (that probably I’m the only one interested in) on those 10,000km.
- No of rides: 395
- Hours in the saddle: 394.4
- Average rides per week: 2.9
- Average speed: 25.36 km/hr

After the ride I spent another 4 hours or so on the painting project, mostly preparation of the next stretch of eaves. It got very hot and I started to feel a little woozy, so gave up – feeling woozy and being up a ladder ain’t a good combination.

We went over to DFO and I picked up another bargain – a pair of 2XU cycling bib-shorts, recommended retail $240, marked down to $50. My first pair of bib-shorts, looking forward to giving them as try.

A home workout to roundout the weekends exercise tonight.

A Saturday very similar to the last one …

Similar in that it started with a trip to the Victoria Market (as most do), then was primarily occupied by more painting of the eaves. I basically spent from about 11am-5pm painting, again an exhausting hot day. Then we went to Bunnings, to buy more paint, but also came away with a nice little Black & Decker sander which might make the surface preparation activities of the rest of the house a little easier. I calculated today that at my current rate of painting I still have about 12 full weekends to go – bloody hell that’s depressing.

The human brain is an amazing thing isn’t it. I listened to Tea for the Tillerman today, after not listening to it for probably at least 25 years, yet I was anticipating the next track as each one finished, knowing what was coming next, and singing along to all the songs. Where does all that data get stored?

I was down into the 73s again at weigh in this morning (73.8 kg to be exact). It would be nice to keep this downward trend going for a few more weeks to give myself a little “Christmas buffer”.

Out for tea tonight, both the kids were out so we went out for a pizza.

Bargain …

Exercise today was a ride to and from work again (yes, that’s three times this week) and a home workout just completed a few minutes ago.

We headed over to the local shopping centre tonight as Rebel Sport were having their “20% off for RACV members” night. My only purchase was a little spiky massage ball thingy, which I think might be good for my glutes. JB Hifi had some better-than-usual CDs in their bargain bins and Adrienne and I chose 6 albums and got them all for $40 – they were Eric Clapton, Doors, Roxy Music, Carole King, Cat Stevens & David Bowie.

I’m trying to prepare myself for another weekend of painting in the hot weather!

Edit: To answer BB’s question, the Clapton, Doors and Roxy Music were greatest hits, Carole King was Tapestry, Cat Stevens was Tea for the Tillerman and David Bowie was Ziggy Stardust. Tapestry, Tea for the Tillerman and Ziggy Stardust are all albums I’ve still got vinyl copies of but haven’t had the equipment to play them on for many years.

First Sandball game for the season …

I rode to work again this morning – contributing to sustainability and less greenhouse gases

After work I played my first game of Sandball for the year. It was a bit of a fizzer though with the opposition only having four players to our six and it was an easy 15-4, 15-3, 15-6 win.

The ride home was not quite as hot as Tuesday night and quite pleasant, although I could do without the laptop/backpack on my back.

Just did a bit PM on the bike including (hopefully) fixing a squeaky seat that has been annoying me.

Happy Birthday Jackie!

I started off the day with an 8km loop with Deb before work (average pace 5:28 min/km). My calf felt okay for the first 4km, but started to get really tight and sore. I survived the run, with one more stretch break than usual and whilst still a bit tender, it doesn’t feel “injured” like it did after the run last Wednesday. I think the running might be a bit less frequent though the next week or so, I might spend some more time on the bike.

Today is Jackie’s (our darling little Jack Russell Terrier) 7th birthday, so I guess when you convert doggy years to human years, we are essentially the same age.

I attended the inaugural Hume BUG (Bicycle User Group) meeting tonight. I figured it would be good to join a group of like minded people in the area. I have managed to escape the first meeting without scoring any jobs, or committee roles or anything, but feel a bit guilty about that! Anyone else belong to a BUG?

Hot, hot, hot …

Phew … it isn’t supposed to be this hot in November, is it?

Yesterday was a pretty normal day, work, followed by an hour or so up a ladder, followed by a short home workout.

Today I decided to ride to work. The ride to work was quite pleasant, the ride home not so much – very hot and windy. When I cooled down I decided to go out for a very short run. This was a “fitness test” to see if the calf was up to my Wednesday run with Deb tomorrow. I survived a slow 2.5km tonight and so will head out tomorrow morning and see how I go on a longer run. Another short home workout followed tea (which was leftovers from the last two nights barbeques).

Better go have a shower now – I stink so bad I’m offending myself.

A hot day painting

Painted for most of the day, from about 9am until about 3pm. Exhausting work and I have tired legs and sore feet from being perched up a ladder all day. To make it worse, the end result isn’t looking that impressive, I’m not a particularly good painter and am hoping that the second coat will look much better.

Then Adrienne and I headed out to the local shopping centre for a coffee and upon returning I went for a bike ride. It was about 25km down the Moonee Ponds Trail to Strathmore and back, at just over 26 km/hr. Warm, but pleasant, out on the bike.

About to go barbeque a nice piece of rump steak … of course gotta have a beer while barbequeing!

Not looking forward to having to work for five days in a row this week.

Edit: Two beers with the bbq, first one was one of my mate Herb’s home brew dark ales (very nice), the second was a Grand Ridge Supershine (11% alcohol) – feeling pleasantly sozzled, which might just get finished off with a glass of the shiraz I opened last night while watching Bones. I think I might sleep well tonight.

Edit: After a few drinks, and all the good TV shows have finished, what better to do than watch the last quarter of the Grand Final again. Chappy …. Chappy …. Chappy!

Preparation …

The usual trip to the Victoria Market started the day and our purchases were definitely more summery. Lots of things to make salads (I love summer for this reason, I think I’m a salad person more than a vegetable person), lots of things to cook on the barbeque (we had some delicious chicken sausages tonight) and lots of nice fruit (much of which went into a delightful fruit salad, with which I had yoghurt and muesli tonight).

The rest of the day was spent painting. Well, not actually painting because the paint tin never got opened, rather it was preparation. The preparation is the worst part I reckon, cleaning, wire brushing, sanding, filling gaps – it is quite hard work, especially in 30 degree heat. I’m re-painting under the eaves around the outside of our house. If you remember I did a little bit when we put up our new deck/pergola, now I’m starting the rest of the house. So, 7 hours or so of preparation today will lead to hopefully significantly less time than that painting tomorrow.

I am pulling out of the Sri Chinmoy Geelong run tomorrow, my sore calf is just not up to it. It is vastly improved, I didn’t really notice it much climbing up and down the ladder all afternoon, nor walking around the market. I went for a short run (2.5km) tonight, including some bursts of race pace, during which there were some definite twinges from the calf. I don’t think it is up to a race. This is the first race I’ve entered and not started. Whilst I’m disappointed, I think that long-term it is the most sensible course of action. “Discretion is the better part of valour”, “Live to fight another day” – funny how those platitudes don’t really make you feel any less disappointed.

Bloody computers …

Having some computer problems tonight. For some inexplicable reason Outlook and Firefox both seem to be having issues on our home computer. I’ve spent the last few hours trying to fix things but have managed to fix neither. I have managed to clean up a whole lot of crap off the computer though, at least it does seem to be starting and operating quicker. I removed Firefox and now it won’t re-install, so I’ve just installed Chrome, Google’s new browser – it is working and seems quite clean and fast – definitely a better prospect than IE. Outlook is still playing up, but at least I can retrieve email via Mail2Web.

My calf is still troubling me. It is improving, and I don’t really notice it when walking now, but am still doubting I’ll be right for race on Sunday – we’ll see how we go, but I think I might do further damage if I push it. So, no exercise yesterday, and just a half-hour home workout tonight.

Drinkies at the pub after work tonight was a pleasant end to the week. I wish all work weeks were three days long!

Sore calf

I went for a run with Deb before work this morning, our usual 8.5km loop. About 5km into the run I had some pain in my calf which got quickly worse. Some walking and stretching didn’t seem to help much, so it was a very slow trot home for the last few kilometres. Still sore now despite lots of icing and self-massage. Doesn’t auger well for the race on Sunday without a miraculous recovery, does it?

Another dratted teleconference tonight, 12:30am-2am (actually I guess that is tomorrow morning isn’t it, not tonight)