Early ride …

A 40km ride with my friend Herb started off the day. We rode from his place in Essendon, up to Greenvale and back. We decided to head north first as that way we would get the headwind and uphill half of the ride over in the first half, rather than struggling towards the end. It was a good choice. A stop at the Westmeadows Bakery for a coffee made it a good start to the day.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful including a little shopping and cleaning the bike and the car.

Last nights TdF stage was again a successful breakaway, which I have to say I think there has been many more of this year than others I can remember. It would have been nice to see big George Hincapie in the yellow jersey, but he just fell short. Astana were not pushing all that hard to catch the breakaway, obviously Lance Armstrong would have liked to have seen George in yellow after all those years of riding the tour with him on US Postal and Discovery Channel. He said on his twitter feed today “No one and I mean no one, wanted George in yellow more than me.” The stage was marred by the death of a spectator who was hit by a police motorcycle, and some questionable unsportsmanlike behaviour in the final sprint by Mark Cavendish. The stage was won by Russian rider Serguei Ivanov of the Katusha team.

Oh, and Go England in the cricket !

Reconnaissance

Great to see Australian born Heinrich Haussler win the 13th stage of the Tour de France last night. A really strong ride from Haussler saw him in an early breakaway that ended up just a two-man breakaway with Quickstep rider Sylvain Chavanel. Haussler powered away on the descent near the end to easily distance himself from Chavanel, finishing nearly 7 minutes ahead of the main peleton. Judging by his reaction as he crossed the line, a very emotional win for Haussler. No change in the order at the top of the GC, but Lance looked very strong on the climbs.

As if the rain didn’t make the conditions treacherous enough for the riders, two of them (New Zealander Julian Dean of Garmin and Spaniard Oscar Freire of Rabobank) were hit by a sniper with airgun pellets near the 165km mark of the stage.

Also great to see that England have those Aussies on the ropes in the second Ashes test at Lords

At weigh in this morning I was 73.7kg, so a bit of a yo-yo pattern, after being 75.0kg last week and 73.8kg the week before that. Maybe the alcohol free week (which ends today, but thinking about extending it) has contributed to the loss this week.

A cold trip to the Victoria Market this morning, multiple layers definitely the order of the day to keep out the winter blast.

This afternoon I drove into Princes Park and ran the 5km circuit that the Sri Chinmoy run next sunday will use. It is advertised on their website as “flat”, but I didn’t remember it as flat, and the Garmin does indeed show that there a few nasty little “undulations”. Todays run was 5km @ 4:58 min/km.

A great early, foggy run

Up early to go for a great cold, foggy run with Deb around our usual, hilly 8km loop. It was slightly slower than usual, a cruisy 5:50 min/km, but that was what we both felt like, and it was very pleasant.

I always like it when I get comments from new readers, yesterdays was Vava, who has a blog with the great name Running, Wonky Ankle and All. Vava asked about my knee taping, which seems to have been quite successful. The knee felt good during the run, hardly a niggle at all. I took the tape off in the shower afterwards (Katrina said to not leave it on too long). I’m happy to report there was no skin problems or blistering underneath like last time. The knee has still stiffened a little during the day as I’m sitting at my desk, but not as bad as usual.

Vava, the taping technique is pretty simple, just taped horizontally across the kneecap, from the outside to the inside, pulling the kneecap towards the centre of the knee.

Tape

I had an early appointment with Katrina this morning, so I went in for a swim first (usual 80 laps), then lounged around a bit in the spa, sauna and steam room.

Katrina has decided the next thing to try is taping my knee, so she’s shown me how to do it, supplied me with tape, and taped it up for me ready for tomorrows run with Deb. I went for a short (12km) ride tonight, just to see what it felt like riding with the tape on. It felt ok.

It is just me, or is the TdF getting a bit predictable? I’m not even going to bother with a summary of last night’s stage. Yesterdays summary of the night before covers it.

Cavendish again …

Another win for Mark Cavendish last night, his third stage win for TdF 2009. All of the leading GC riders positions remain unchanged. Good to see Australian rider Mark Renshaw getting due plaudits for the job he is doing delivering Cavendish to perfect positions for the sprint finish. Cavendish said last night, “Mark Renshaw for me is the man of the day”.

For me, the day started with 2km (80 laps) in the pool and ended with a 6km run at 5:24 min/km pace.

Interested to see the story in the Sun today about the group of overweight English children who were participating in a study using pedometers. When organisers saw that one group of kids were recording many more steps than others, but not showing any greater weight loss benefits, investigation showed the kids were connecting the pedometers to the collars of their pet dogs! Lazy, but ingenious!

It’s always a favourite day of the month when I get the new Runner’s World. This months has a feature story on stretching and strengthening your knees, and a story on picking the healthiest chocolate. If that’s not an issue meant for me I don’t know what is. Also noted that the sage advice of young Em is featured again in the “What they are saying on the forum” feature. Second month in a row isn’t it Em?

Brief post …

Not much to report today except that I am now a 3 customer and owner of a new Nokia 5800 phone. The number transfer has occurred okay, it’s charged up and I’ve managed to transfer all my contacts etc and load up a little bit of music off the computer. I haven’t signed up for a data plan, so I’ll have to stay away from the internet functions, or it could get expensive.

Just a 6km run tonight, around the usual loop at 5:28 min/km average.

More phone business

Another TdF stage last night where the breakaway was successful, even with some very serious climbs. I only watched last night until the peleton reached the Tourmalet summit. The most interesting aspect for me was the amazing crowds. Amazing from the point of view of the huge numbers and how crazy it is with them so close to the riders – I can’t believe there are not more collisions between spectators and riders.

Of interest too, are some of the comments coming from Armstrong. He admitted on French TV that there were some tensions in the Astana team, and whilst admitting he would follow team rules and support Contador, also said “We’ll have more moments, we’ll see who’s truly the strongest”. He also hinted that this may not be his last Tour – asked on French television whether this would be his last participation at the Tour, he answered “Probably not”. Methinks Lance might be enjoying himself too much.

God, I hope Lance wins – talk about fairytale of all fairytales.

I got up and went in for a swim this morning. Up at 5am to get there at 6am when doors open. I was in the locker room, half undressed, when I realised I’d left my swimming bag (containing hand paddles, pull buoy, swim cap, earplugs and goggles) in the car (which is parked about a city block away). Knowing that I’m on a tight time schedule to have a decent swim, get back to the car before the parking meters kick in, and get back to work, I took the easy way out and just bought the neccessities at the gym. For me, I can’t swim in chlorine without goggles, and hate getting water in my ears. So $25 later, I got a new pair of goggles and earplugs, and hit the pool – so a much more expensive 80 laps than usual.

An update on the phone situation. I visited a different “T” shop today and got what I wanted done (transfer my work number to personal ownership) in a few minutes. So what one “T” shop told me wasn’t possible, is now done. So, now that it is in my ownership, I need to decide what I want to do. I think that I will end up at “3″ as their plans seem the best value, and both the kids are with “3″ too so I will get much better value with the free calls. The only selling point “T” have is their coverage, but I am usually within metropolitan boundaries, so I don’t think it should be an issue. As far as phones go, I have always had a Nokia and found them good. I would like to have a better camera than is in mine, and would like some better music/radio playing capability. I’m not going to use the internet on the phone much, I will pretty much just be making voice calls and sending text messages I think. I’m leaning towards the Nokia 5800 at the moment I think.

Anyone have any thoughts either on “3″ or phones in general?

A rest day in France today, so a few more hours sleep for me tonight.

A wet and windy ride …

Had planned to get up and go for a swim this morning, but again I woosed out and stayed in bed instead. I didn’t stay up until the end of the Tour stage last night, but was still later to bed than usual. I don’t think staying up and watching the tour, and early morning exercise mix for someone my age.

Anyway, most of the day was fairly lazy again, didn’t do much.

Decided I needed to do some exercise so got the cycling gear on at about 3pm. As I walked out the door it started to rain. Now, normally I wouldn’t ride in the rain, but perservered today as I felt I really needed to do something. It rained for about the first 20km of the 30km I rode, and was a little slippery (really have to watch the white lines on the road in the wet), but managed to survive unscathed. Ended up averaging just under 25km/hr which wasn’t too bad considering the wet and windy conditions.

Another wonderful experience with our national telecommunications provider this afternoon when I went round to one of Kate’s friends to try and help get their ADSL internet working. After spending about 20 minutes on the phone (to someone in India I’m guessing), we got precisely nowhere because they won’t replace the obviously faulty ADSL modem because Kate’s friends parent’s (who are the account holders) are away on holiday and they apparently need their authority. Sounds like an excuse to me – after all, they’re not changing anything on the account, just changing some faulty equipment.

10.21km @ 5:39 min/km

The first day in the Pyrenees saw another breakaway group “stay away”, and another French winner, Brice Feillu of the Agritubel team. Yellow jersey holder Fabian Cancellara lost over 9 minutes to drop from first to 39th place. Another member of the breakaway group, Italian rider Rinaldo Nocentini, of the AG2R-La Mondiale team, took the yellow jersey.

Alberto Contador showed us maybe a sign of things to come, with a fast breakaway from the group of GC leaders to take second position overall from Lance Armstrong. Cadel Evans finished strongly to finish in front of the main group, and moved up to 18th place, still over 3 minutes behind the leader.

Now the run I did today may not seem worthy enough of being the title of todays post, in fact for many of you it would be a very short, and very slow run. However for me it was a bit of a landmark run. Firstly because it is the first time I’ve broken into double figures (distance wise), in a training run, since last September. Secondly, because the wind was so strong today, and so cold, that I was proud of myself for getting out there, let alone staying out for that long. Honestly there was one “into the wind and uphill” stretch of my 2 lap course I ran today where it felt like I was running hard but going nowhere.

My knee felt okay this morning, I’ve worked out now that it takes about a day and a half of taking the anti-inflams (twice a day) to settle it down. It also feels okay now after the run. It is bugging me that the last two times my knee has started to hurt it hasn’t been after a run, it’s been when I haven’t done much running. I’ve started a more detailed “knee journal” page in my training journal spreadsheet to document how it feels, when I take the anti-inflams etc to try and work out what is going on.

At my weekly weigh-in this morning, I was dead-on target weight (75.0kg), a whopping 1.2kg heavier than last week.

The latest cost cutting measure at my workplace is the removal of company provided mobile phones, so today I ventured into the local telecommunication supplier store, armed with properly signed approval forms, to move my mobile number over to a personal plan. I was told that I couldn’t do it however because my personal account is on their new system, and my companys account is on their old system. Apparently, the only solution to this is to “de-migrate” my personal account to the old system to make the transfer of ownership. This would take 5 business days, and would also result in loss of service to my home phone for at least 24 hours during that period. I also fear for what sort of billing and accounting issues it would likely cause.  I also had to ask the little man who was trying to explain this to me to write it all down because I could hardly understand what he was saying. I suggested they set me up another account on their old system and transfer the phone to that, I said I didn’t mind a seperate bill. Oh no, we can’t do that, we can’t have more than one account for one person. So, then I suggested that maybe I should transfer all my other services to another supplier, then I wouldn’t have an account. That I was told would be an “over-reaction”. Needless to say, I opted to do nothing and will take it up with my corporate representative of this wonderful national telecommunications supplier of ours (think the “T” word). I left the shop telling them in no uncertain terms that they needed to get their act together.

I have also decided to try and have an alcohol free week, starting today. Shouldn’t be too hard – should it ?

A lazy day off …

Today was my “one Friday a fortnight off” and it was a really lazy, “do nothing” day. Started off with a sleep in, then pretty much consisted of a bit of reading, watching some DVDs (“Bones”, Series 1), some futzing on the computer and not much else.

My knee is sore again, the worse it’s been for a while. I took an anti-inflam last night and this morning, but it’s been bothering me all day. Therefore I decided a run or a ride was probably not a good idea and settled for a half hour upper body free weights and core workout.

I didn’t stay up to watch the end of the Tour last night, so was gutted to hear this morning that Mick Rogers had crashed last night – he really hasn’t had much luck with the TdF the last couple of years. Tonight’s stage, with the first serious hills should sort the leaders out a bit.