Commuted to work on the bike today and I remembered to go for a swim as well. Quite uneventful. Felt reasonably OK given that I was still a bit stiff from weights yesterday.

800 FS
5 * 100 IM on 1:50 (1:32)
10 * 50 FS {
    4 @ 60
    4 @ 55
    2 @ 50 }
5 * 100 Rev. IM on 2:00 (1:34)
10 * 50 FS {
    4 @ 60
    4 @ 55
    2 @ 50 }
Total: 2800m

Only a weights session tomorrow and then it’s snow time! Dave’s arriving from Ireland tomorrow morning, then himself, Tom and myself are heading down to the snow on Friday.

S: 2800m – B: 52.6km – R: 2.5km – W: 1 session

Rode home from work last night and did two laps of the park. I forgot to go swimming yesterday lunchtime though; I only remembered at 12.30 by which time it was too late. I could have run over and got 40mins in maybe, but decided to wait until Wednesday instead.

There was a rest day in the Tour so I got to bed at a reasonable hour, but still struggled getting out of bed this morning. Yesterday morning was also bloody freezing, so I decided it was time to take out the windproof fleece bike top today and it worked a treat. I was nice and toasty while whizzing down the hill on Old South Head Road on the way to the ferry.

I got a good weights session in just now. It’s good to see progress being made, and little increments over last week show that I’m getting a bit stronger. Only two weeks to go and then I can relax a bit, enjoy the snowboarding season and then get stuck into aerobic exercise after that. I’m cycling home this evening too, though won’t be doing any laps of the park today.

B: 37.6km – R: 2.5km – W: 1 session

Here’s an interview with Robert Pape, on the logic behind suicide bombings, as he has studied every suicide attack since the 80s.

TAC: If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim territory?

RP: The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.

Via: Schneier On Security

Last night was Christine & Danny’s birthdays, so we all headed out for a bit of a boogie down at UN. Here are the photos.

My old Canon Digital Ixus is great for point & shoot photos at parties, but not that great for scenic or actions shots, especially since it’s all automatic and you can’t change lenses, so I’ve wanted to get a digital SLR for a while now with the intention of learning how to take good photos. Jacqui has had a film SLR for a couple of years and I’ve played with that a little and got some reasonably good photos by trial and error, but it was time to get my own camera.

The first batch of cameras from Canon and Nikon were either too expensive (Nikon D70) or felt a bit flimsy (Canon 300D), so I’ve been watching what’s been happening as the updated models appeared. I was always going to buy either a Canon or Nikon, simply because they’re well respected and both have a massive range of lenses already available. Olympus & Pentax are making good DSLRs too, but just dont have the lens range & availability that the big two do. It came down to a choice between the Nikon D70s (updated D70), the Nikon D50 and the Canon 350D.

The D70s is a nice camera, though quite a bit larger than the Canon and more expensive. It’s got 6 megapixles, a good reputation, and while it gives away 2 megapixels to the Canon, its picture quality is on a par. However, Nikon’s lenses are usually an average of $150 more expensive than the equivalent Canon, and most independent reviews state that you can’t tell the difference between them, and in a few instances Canon’s are better.

The D50 is a smaller version of the D70s. Same pixel count & image processing pipeline, just a smaller camera with a few less features. One of the main negatives is that you can’t get a battery grip for it, as I wanted the option of being able to shoot using AA batteries in situations where I’m away from a power supply and taking lots of photos.

In the end I decided to buy a Canon 350D. Its build quality is much better than the 300D, it’s gone from 6.1 megapixels to 8, and the image processing chip has been upgraded to the same one as used by its more expensive big brother, the Canon 20D, which has an excellent reputation. It has the option of a battery grip, and Canon had just released a starter kit which included their EF-S 17-85mm lens, complete with image stabilisation for only slightly more than the Nikon D70s with stock lens, so it was a fairly easy decision in the end. I was also swayed a bit by the fact that Jacqui’s camera is also a Canon, so we could share any lenses we buy in the future.

I picked the camera up on Friday and have been playing with it a bit since then. There’s so much to learn though that it will take me ages to figure it all out. I took the camera out last night to Christine & Danny’s birthday, but it’s a bit too cumbersome for party shooting so I’ll stick to the Digital Ixus for that. However, I’m off snowboarding in NZ in a couple of weeks and the scenery there is fantastis, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some good shots there. It also means I can claim back the 10% GST on the camera.

Happy Shooting!

The final part of the weights program, the heavy lifting bit, started this week. I wasn’t able to go to the gym on Monday, so I started on Wednesday instead, and went again today. I’m really noticing the difference now, as my muscles are sore all the time now, especially my quads. Only a couple more weeks to go and I’m done though, so I cam put up with it until then. I’ve also done two 2.5km runs as warm-ups before the weights, but I missed out on the Monday swim session.

I’ve started commuting by bike again as it’s just less hassle than public transport, especially since I’m getting up a bit later due to staying up late to watch the Tour de France live on SBS. I cycle down to Rose Bay and get the ferry in in the morning’s as I’m too tired to deal with climbing the hill up to Bondi Junction. In the evening I cycle all the way home, with a few optional laps around Centennial Park depending on how I feel and how dark it is. I think I’ll just go straight home today ;-)

B: 56.4km – R: 5km – W: 2 sessions

There’s a road rule here in Oz which states that if you’re parking by the side of the road, you must park your car in the same direction as the traffic. This makes sense on a busy road as you don’t want someone holding up traffic while they try to get to the far side of the road. On quiet, low traffic, residential streets, it’s not that important.

I woke up this morning to find some tosser from the council writing tickets for all the parked cars on our street which were not facing the correct way, one of which happened to be Jacqui’s. He had a police escort, no doubt wary of getting smacked upside the head by a grumpy resident who hadn’t yet had their civilising coffee. $125 per car, and I saw at least 10 cars with tickets.

The knowledge that I can go to sleep and have the local council stab me in the back as a revenue raising exercise overnight gives me a nice warm glow inside. Bastards.

I’m sitting in my apartment as the wind howls outside, and whitecaps adorn the sea, yet there’s an ice-cream truck outside with its jingles going. Somehow I doubt he’ll make much money today!

This is an example of what a shit piece of software Windows is. I fired up Virtual PC only to have one of those nagging dialogs that are so popular on Windows show up. This one informed me that there were ‘unused icons on my Desktop’. I discarded it, but in true Windows fashion it popped up again, 10 seconds later! Just fuck off and stop annoying me!

I decided to let it run, so it informed me that four icons on my desktop hadn’t been used in a few months and did I want to get rid of them. I elected to trash three of them and clicked OK. What did it do???? It just created a new fucking folder on my Desktop and moved the three icons into that.

What fucking genius in Microsoft decided that this was a critical piece of software to include in the operating system? Are Windows users too fucking stupid to use the delete key? Do they need a wizard to figure out how to get rid of stuff from their desktop?

PS: Can you tell this stuff gives me the shits? ;-)

Just heard that there’s just been a bomb scare around the corner from our office. The ‘all-clear’ had already been sounded by the time we found out about it. No reports of it on the news sites yet though.

Rode in and out of work on Wednesday, including a few laps of the park. This time I was on my own, rather than riding at the back of a bunch and it required a bit more effort for a bit less speed. Did a weights session yesterday which went pretty well, and preceded it with a 2.5km warm-up run. This afternoon it was time for a swim which didn’t go too well. I just felt really sluggish and couldn’t get any feel for the water and just got quite tired quite quickly. It’s probably a combination of not being in the water for the previous three weeks, going to the Friday session instead of Monday (fresh after the weekend) and being a bit stiff after weights yesterday.

100 BC/ 200 FS/ 100 BC
3 * 200 FS on 2:50 (2:45)
4 * 50 FS on 60 (45)
3 * 50 FS on 55 (45)
3 * 50 FS on 50 (45)
400 FS on 6:00 (5:55)
300 Swim Down
Total: 2200m

S: 2200m – B: 45.2km – R: 2.5km – W: 2 sessions

Was out for dinner last night when news came through of the bombings in London. Thankfully all my friends there are OK. Watched a bit of coverage when I got home and the one thing which struck me was how calm and ordered things appeared. The emergency services were going about their jobs in a well-organised fashion and there were no hysterics or bewilderment from witnesses and surviors. I know London has a long history of dealing with terrorism thanks to the I.R.A. and the attack wasn’t as shocking as the images of the WTC collapsing, but even still it was impressive.

Still, I couldn’t help noticing that after almost four years of the ‘War On Terror™’, Bin Laden, its main protagonist, is alive, well, active and no nearer to being caught. Focused on the wrong problem perhaps?

Update: this Guardian article lists the major I.R.A. bombs which went off in London and gives a good idea of why they were so prepared.

Got back into the gym yesterday for a weights session. Only one month to go until I’m finished the program too. I’m down to two sets of nine reps with reasonably heavy weights. Next week it jumps to four sets of nine and that’s when it’s going to start to hurt.

Rode home last night and did a couple of laps of Centennial Park in the dark. Just as I arrived the regular bunch was passing by, so I tagged on the back, figuring it would be a bit safer with 40-odd riders than going it solo in the pitch black. I had my HR monitor on so it will be interesting to compare speed & HR in the bunch against me riding around on my own.

B: 22.6km – W: 1 session

From: Brad DeLong

That whenever any Form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations upon such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Hopefully they’ll get their shit together soon.

I decided to take the week off last week to recover from the adventure race, doing nothing apart from a 35min trainer session on Friday, but i’m starting back today. I had intended cycling in to work yesterday but realised that I had no bike light, so I postponed cycling until today, and bought myself a new, super-bright front LED.

Inspired partly by the

Here’s Hippy, Jacqui’s new cat. He’s 3yrs old, a bit fat but very friendly and easy-going. Every weekend the Sunday Telegraph selects an animal from the Animal Welfare League shelters and puts their picture in the paper, along with a brief description. This is how Jacqui met Hippy and it was love at first sight. His description said he was independent, loved nothing more than sitting on his arse in the sun (I’m paraphrasing a bit) and that he was perfect for people who’d be at work all day.

Jacqui wasn’t 100% certain that we should get a cat, so she decided to wait a week. Seven days later the paper revealed that no-one had taken Hippy, so we decided to visit the shelter the following weekend. When we got there he was just as advertised, lying in the sun! After a bit of familiarisation, Jacqui decided she’d take him, so here he is. He has been around for the last two weeks and has settled in perfectly. He doesn’t hassle the birds or the fish, but he does like staring at them. The birds seems to have adjusted to the new arrival as they’re back to chirping loudly.

Ireland is now the second richest country in Europe (per capita GDP), behind Luxembourg.

From The New York Times:

“Ireland’s advice is very simple: Make high school and college education free; make your corporate taxes low, simple and transparent; actively seek out global companies; open your economy to competition; speak English; keep your fiscal house in order; and build a consensus around the whole package with labor and management – then hang in there, because there will be bumps in the road – and you, too, can become one of the richest countries in Europe.”

Just had a quick look and the official results are now online. We came 21st out of 40 in the Mixed catogory, and 73rd out of 150 overall with an official time of 4:31.03. Turns out the team in 20th only beat us by two seconds!

Lessons learned for the next one:

1. Attach the bike repair kits & pump to the bike. Do not carry it around in your backpack.

2. Get a much smaller backpack and only carry the bare essentials.

3. Do LOTS more run training!

I did my first ever adventure race at the weekend and it was great fun. It was a team event, each team consisting of two people, so Becs got roped into being my teammate and we entered in the Mixed category. Given that neither of us had ever done an event before, we enrolled in the training day which was held the day before the race.

Saturday morning dawned to a light drizzle which put a bit of a dampener on things, but we drove down to the Royal National Park with only a vague idea of what lay in store for us. We knew it was a training day, but I wasn’t sure whether they’d have us running around all day or not. As it turned out it was quite relaxed. We spent the morning learning the basics of navigation; how to use a compass, plot your location on a map and then navigate to your destination. We wouldn’t actually need much navigation skills for the race, but they’ll come in handy at some stage in the future. We also got plenty of tips for route planning, and got advised to arrive early so we’d have plenty of time to annotate our map with our chosen route and some navigation clues.

After that it was a spot of lunch, followed by the rudiment of mountain biking (which I already knew) and the basics of kayaking. Having been on the kayaking course previously I thought I was well prepared, but as the kayak we’d be using in the race was only half the length of a sea kayak, and also inflatable, it spun on a dime, so most of the what we’d learnt on the kayaking course no longer applied. If we tried using the ‘torso rotation’ method of paddling, the kayak just spun underneath us! It had rained on and off all day, so I ended up soaking wet and freezing by the time I got home. I’d have to prepare better for race day!

The alarm went off on race day at 5:20 and I could hear the rain outside. “OK,” I thought to myself, “it’s going to be a mud fest!” After a quick bowl of cereal I packed up my gear, making sure I brought a complete change of clothes for after the race. Becs picked me up a little after 6:00 and we made it down to the Royal shortly after 7:00, dropped off our bikes at the bike transition, then got a great park near the start and registered nice and early. We picked the map and race instructions out of the bag and headed back to the car to plot our route around the course.

8:40 saw us standing in the rain listening to the race briefing, feeling surprisingly relaxed. Probably worrying more about the weather than the race itself! The gun went off at 8:56 and we sauntered off at the back of the pack. Our first checkpoint was about 1.5km up the Hacking River and we had to row to get there. I started off the rowing, though launching the boat amongst about 10-15 other teams meant that the first few minutes were spent trying not to crash into someone. Becs navigated out to the checkpoint which was a lot further than it had looked on the map and it took us about half an hour to reach it. We punched our card, then turned to head back to the boat shed. We considered swapping places and letting Becs row for a bit, but decided against trying to swap places for fear of ending up in the water. I’d remembered that the current flows fastest in the centre of the river, so we did our best to stay away from the banks and it only took about 20mins to get back to the boat shed.

The second section was all running, with a further three checkpoints to navigate to. Our preparation in the car paid off as we knew almost exactly where we were going, though as it involved gaining and then losing about 100m in altitude, my legs weren’t too happy with the whole operation. Carrying about 5kg of stuff in my backpack didn’t really help either. I was pretty pleased after nabbing the 4th checkpoint until I realised we had to run back up to the Visitor’s Centre to start the bike legs. Anyone who has driven into the Royal National Park knows that the hill down to the weir is bloody steep, so can imagine having to run back up it. The road was off-limits, so we had to use and adjacent walking trail which consisted mostly of steps. I decided from the start that I was going to walk it and Becs was happy to oblige, though I suspect I was holding her up as trailwalking is her strong point.

By this stage we’d been going for almost two hours and I was feeling a bit tired. I’d been drinking water regularly and had eaten a Mars & a breakfast bar, but it was now time to bring out the heavy artillery in the form of a Gu Energy Gel. It was quite tasty, but I didn’t get any sugar rush from it. However, I soon forgot about being tired and it was only an hour later that I realised that I’d been charging around the place without issue, so they obviously work very well!

We finally made it to the bike transition at the Visitor’s Centre, checked in with the course marshalls and jumped on the bikes for the MTB leg. There was mud everywhere so we had a great time charging through the puddles and just getting completely spattered with dirt. Becs took a turn at navigating, but I ruied it a bit by taking off down what I thought was the right track, but turned out to be the wrong one. Luckily we didn’t end up too far from our desired destination so we didn’t really lose any time.

There was one tricky section of the course which was a steep downhill. Given the conditions you’d fall over if you went too slow, but you couldn’t go too fast either as there were other teams walking uphill towards us. We made it down at a reasonable pace without issue, clicked off our 7th checkpoint and started the long walk up the hill on the other side. Cycling up wasn’t really an option as there was so much mud it was almost impossible to get traction. The 8th checkpoint was at the school near Grays Point, where we ditched the bikes and ran (well walked) through suburbia to the local boat ramp for the kayaing leg, stopping en route to explain to some kids what was going on. After all, there were plenty of mud-covered lunatics running back and forth through their streets.

The kayak leg was a pain in the arse as the kayaks were inflatable. The recommendation was to put the heavier person in the back, so that left Becs up front. Given the weight difference between us the boat actually bent in the middle! Ideally we should have been kneeling up and leaning slightly forward, but I wasn’t able to kneel due to my recurring foot issue. It hadn’t been bothering me during the race, but it seems to be triggered by stretching my foot, so sitting on it was almost certain to aggravate the problem. I ended up sitting on my arse, in probably the least efficient paddling position. Thankfully the leg was only about 30mins long, after which we ran back to the school, picked up the bikes and entered the great unknown.

In an effort to prevent any cheating, the last six checkpoints were not marked on competitor’s maps and had to be acquired on course. As we picked up the bikes, the course marshall showed us his map with the next checkpoint marked on it and we were off. It was now just one long MTB dirt fest to the finish. At each remaining checkpoint there was the hole punch to mark your control card, and a map with the next checkpoint marked on it. We flew around the rest of the course, apart from a hiccup at checkpoint 12, where some kind soul had stolen both the hole punch and the map showing the location of checkpoint 13. Thankfully some volunteers were on hand to explain the situation and point out CP13 on our map.

CP13, CP14 and CP15 followed in rapid succession, with us passing a couple of mixed teams en route. CP15 was the last checkpoint, and all that remained was to ride to the road and speed downhill back to the weir. There was another mixed team right in front of us, so we hammered downhill and managed to pass them. We dumped our bikes in the last bike transition, shouted our team number to the marshalls and asked “Is that it? Are we finished?”. The response was “What does your course card tell you to do.” Unfortunately it said we had to run back to where we’d started the race, a distance of about 1km. Off we went, but my knees were in bits at this stage and my run more closely resembled a hobble. The teams we’d passed on the downhill sauntered past us and there was nothing we could do. We crossed the line with big grins on our faces with my watch reading 4hrs 34mins. Happy Days ;-)

We’ll definitely do another one.

Just finished a big order to Amazon of a few books I’ve been wanting to read for a while. I’d better learn to speed read!

The Best American Science Writing 2004

Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

History of the Arab Peoples

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004

The Devil’s Teeth : A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks

The Market for Aid

The Best Software Writing I

Should keep me going for a while.