Feeling a bit tired now, but got a good day’s exercise in. Cycled in to work via New South Head Road, but the bloody hill through King’s Cross almost killed me; HR peaked at 177. I could have gone through the tunnel but I figured that it’s probably not the safest place to cycle through in rush hour traffic.

The lunchtime swim session was another distance oriented one which was cool. Felt a bit better today than I did on Wednesday, so I reckon I’ve managed to shake off the cold before it got established. However my legs were cramping up again towards the end of the session, so I’ll have to figure out what that’s about. It’s not dehydration, so all I can think of is that it may be caused by me not stretching my legs after riding in in the morning. Something to remember for next week then.

400 warm up
4 * 400 FS on 6:30 (5:39)
3 * 100 BC on 2:00 (1:45)
3 * 100 IM on 2:00 (1:27)
6 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:25)
200 warm down
Total: 3400m

Cycled home via Centennial Park and did some core/weights stuff when I got home. Going to get some ice-cream now ;-)

S: 6600m – B: 58km – 2 * weights/core

Yesterday’s lunchtime swim was a bit of a welcome surprise in that we did some 400s and 200s instead of the usual raft of 100s & 50s. While chatting to the coach afterwards he mentioned that he was going to try to do more distance work in future which I’m very happy about. Unfortunately, I felt very sluggish during the whole session which I figured was the beginnings of a cold caught from Jacqui. Sure enough, she woke up sick this morning and I wasn’t feeling great either.

400 warm up
2 * 400 Pull on 6:20 (5:50)
5 * 200 FS on 3:15 (2:51)
3 * 100 FS on 1.35/1:30/1:30
3 * 100 BC on 1:55 (1:45)
2 * 100 FS on 1:50
200 warm down
Total: 3200m

I cycled in and out of work as well, doing a couple of laps of Centennial Park on the way home for a total of 30.7km, then did a weights/core session when I got home.

S: 3200m – B: 30.7km – 1 weights/core

Myself and Jacqui had a great weekend. Flew to Dubbo on Saturday morning in a small turbojet plane. Flying inland from Sydney, which was in itself unusual, it was surprising to see how green Sydney actually is. The suburbs have plenty of trees – certainly more than I’ve seen in any other city I’ve flow over – and there’s the Royal National Park to the south, Ku-ring-Gai to tne north and the Blue Mountains to the west.

We went straight to the Western Plains Zoo on landing and spent the morning cycling around the zoo. Jacqui was more excited by the fact that she could cycle a bike than with the animals! There were plenty of keeper talks, including one with the Siamang apes at which the two individuals performed an amazing inpromptu territorial song, and another where you could feed the giraffes.

After checking in to our safari-style accommodation, we jumped on the first of our behind the scenes tours, visiting elephants, then giraffes (which we fed again) and finishing up watching a pack of African wild dogs being fed a kangaroo carcass – probably not the best thing to see before sitting down to some lamb rump! The second tour commenced immediately after dinner and this time we called in on the tigers (completely distinterested in us), the wombat (quite happy to stand and allow us to pat/stroke her) and the hippos. We were also able to tickle the Giant Tortoises, one of which promptly farted with pleasure!

That was it for the evening, which was just as well as we were both exhausted. Rising bright and early at 7am, we got the final guided tour with a visit to the White Handed Gibbons, the Siamang apes, a stop to feed a rhino follwed by a visit to the lions. Initially they weren’t interested in our presence at all, but once we walked around to the side of their night enclosure, and they noticed there were two small kids with us, everything changed. Both of them bounded up to the fence and started pacing alongside, keeping a close eye on the child. One tired of this an went to lie down at the far side of the cage as the child had wandered away. A few minutes later the kid returned to the fence area, and turned her back on the cage as she was talking to her Dad; straight away the other lion jumped up, ran over and crouched down ready to pounce on the other side of the fence. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the child was little more than a chicken nugget!

A tasty fry-up followed, after which we checked out and wandered around the public side of the zoo checking out the animals we’d missed the previous day, and killing time until the rhino tour, which was an extra not included in the safari package. It was well worth it as we visited three difference species of rhino and were allowed to feed two (Black Rhino & Greater One-horned Rhino) and see a week-old White Rhino (already weighing approx. 80kg!)

We later spent a brief moment in Dubbo itself before jumping on the plane back to Sydney in time for Law & Order ;-) The trip is definitely worth doing, especially since the Parkes Telescope is only an hour away, so you could combine the two. I only found that out while I was already there, which pissed Jacqui off as I’d already admitted not researching the holiday. Oh well, it just means we’ll have to go back some time.

The battle against fundamentalist christians continues in the US. Kansas is battling attempts to have the theory of intelligent design taught alongside evolution in science classrooms:

But the largest applause of the evening was reserved for a silver-haired gentleman in a navy blue blazer. “I have a question: if man comes from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Why do you waste time teaching something in science class that is not scientific?” he thundered.

That quote illustrates the problem quite nicely- we didn’t come from monkeys, we are related to them, meaning we share a common ancestor.

I’ve just got my iPod Shuffle up and running and it’s great! For a start it’s tiny, about the length of my index finger and a third as thick. It took me ages to rebuild my iTunes library from my ‘normal’ iPod after my external HD crashed last week, but once I had I plugged the iShuffle (as I’m calling it) in, and told it to Autofill at random from my ‘non-clubbing’ playlist. That’s when I noticed the one and only issue – USB is bloody slow when you’re used to Firewire. The first song it chose was George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice which I haven’t heard in years – it sounds fantastic on the headphones, so that’s scotched the rumours that the supplied headphones weren’t that good. Maybe if you’re an audiophile you will notice flaws, but for the average person they’re more than capable. AU$150 gets you a 512Mb iShuffle which is a bargain as far as I’m concerned. Even Dean (our office PC holdout) got one today ;-)

Since we’re in Canberra this week, myself and Tom brought the bikes down so we could get some mountain biking in. On Monday night we headed out with Dean, aiming for Majura Pines. We got to the entrance to the forest when Tom decided he was going back to the hotel as he was still a bit jetlagged and wasn’t feeling too good. Myself and Dean proceeded to ride singletrack for two hours, making it back to the hotel just after dark. We were a bit worried when there was no sign of Tom, or his bike, in the room, thinking that he must have been feeling a bit worse than he thought!

We checked at reception to make sure he hadn’t shown up and were in the garage about to go looking for him when he rang from the room. He’d gotten a puncture just after leaving us, and by the time he’d fixed it he was feeling OK, so he’d gone for a ride after all. Hed’ found himself without a patch, or a spare tube, after a second puncture, so he was forced to walk home, which explained how we’d got home before him despite not passing him on the trails. To be honest, the first place we were planning on looking was Debacle, figuring he’d settled in for some food and a Duvel!

Paul brought us to Kowen Forest, site of the MONT 24hr race, on Tuesday evening. It’s a 17.3km course consisting mainly of singletrack with a few bits of firetrail as joiners. It was raining, but we went anyway as it was still quite warm. I’d given Tom a spare tube, but he was still getting slow punctures, so we’d end up cycling for 10mins, then stopping to pump up his tyre before getting going again. He was getting a bit sick of it by the end of the lap. We opted for the short course as we had no lights and didn’t want to be caught in the middle of an unfamiliar forest after dark, but I’m keen to try the long course the next time we’re down, this time with no slow punctures ;-)

B: 37.3km

Made it to La Perouse on the way home after all, though it was bloody hot. It amazing what a pain in the arse it is to ride in traffic. It was about 33km in total, yet it took over 1.5hrs. As soon as I’d get going I’d have to stop at a bloody traffic light. Got home just in time to shower, have something to eat and head out for the swim, only to have the bus fail to show up so I never got to do it after all.

S: 5200m – B: 82.3km – 3 * core

Got up this morning and did a core session before heading off to work on the bike. I had intended cycling to La Perouse on the way, but didn’t have time so I doubled back at the roundabout at Maroubra Junction. Did a pretty good session in the pool at lunch time, but my legs totally cramped up towards the end of the session, probably because I never didi any stretching after the ride in the morning, and hadn’t really eaten any decent food (a muffin doesn’t count). Must force myself to eat something decent for breakfast in future.

600 Warm Up
2 * {
    100 Single Arm
    100 6 strokes FS/BC } on 3:50 (3:05)
2 * 200 Pull on 3:30 (3:10)
4 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:24)
2 * 100 FS on 1:35 (1:24)
2 * 100 FS on 1:30 (1:24)
3 * 100 IM on 1:50 (1:30)
100 Warm Down
Total: 2600m

I got in to work relatively early, so I might cycle home vis La Perouse. BRATs are holding a 1km sea swim this evening at North Bondi, so I might give that a go as well. I’ll see how I feel after the cycle home.

S: 5200m – B: 47.3km – 3 * core

Yesterday was Australia Day, a public holiday, so myself and Kevin headed off to the Blue Mountains to do a bit of mountain biking. We decided en-route to have a go at the Linden Ridge trail which turned out to be an inspired choice. After a few kms of fire trail we found the start of the singletrack section off to the side. It was a little overgrown, so we were getting scratched and scraped by bushes & small tree branches as we travelled along, crashing through plenty of spider webs (we took turns leading). The terrain was quite varied, alternating between rocky, sandy and leafy, with plenty of puddles from the rain that morning which kept things interesting and fairly challenging. 6.5kms later we got to the end – no expansive views or anything special, just the trail petering out, so we turned around and came back. The return journey seemed quicker, maybe because we knew what to expect and just balsted through most of the puddles as we now knew how deep they were.

On returning to the firetrail we decided to keep going for a few more kms until we found another, shorter, section of singletrack, approximately 1.5km long. Did that too, then decided to turn for home. There was a little more firetrail to go, but it was downhill to a turnaround (with nothing spectacular to see there) and since we’d been riding for almost 3 hours at this stage and were both getting a bit tired, we decided we couldn’t be bothered adding any more climbing to the route. The return journey wasn’t as uphill as we thought it would be, but there were still a couple of big hills which we had to struggle up. By the end we were both exhausted and commented that perhaps we should have turned around a little sooner!

All up it was bloody good fun. After a pint and some wedges we headed home and had an Australia Day barbie at mine with Niall & Mayra. We’de pretty much finished eating before we realised we hadn’t had any lamb so we rectified that by throwing on a few chops. It wouldn’t do to be UnAustralian!

Woke up this morning with scratches & scrapes, a bruised hip from falling over while clipped in on a tricky rocky bit and a nice sunburnt neck. I was also totally exhausted – maybe the beer, wine, wedges & bbq meat was less than optimal refueling nutrition ;-)

The ride is definitely one we’ll do again with the rest of the guys, though maybe with long sleeve shirts!

S: 2600m – B: 29.8km – 2 * core

Got up yesterday morning and did another core session before heading in to work. Got a decent swim in at lunch again.

400 FS Warm Up
8 * {25 K/ 25 FS, 20sec }
3 * {
    200 FS 3:30 (2:32)
    200 FS Easy on 4:00 (3:06) }
6 * 50 FS on 1:00 (38)
300 Warm Down
Total: 2600m

I had planned to go for a run last night, but a sore toe put paid to that. It’s like as if I’d stubbed it on something, but I didn’t. It’s been like that for a week or so and I aggravated it by running on it last Friday. Hopefully it will have calmed down by Wednesday.

S: 2600m – 1 core session