no Blues on the Green!

So they postponed Blues on the Green last night, due to fears of inclement weather. It turned out to be a gorgeous evening too! Bah. We had quite a contingent prepared to feast on delicious food and listen to good music last night... until our plans got changed. The usual suspects (Gordon, myself, Mike, +Paul, -Nedra) went for our trail run on the greenbelt and then soaked in Barton Springs afterwards. Then we all decided to go out for some food considering it was such a beautiful evening! We also met up with Sheri and Jeff (who didn't know that Blues was cancelled...) and went to Austin Java and sat outside and had a great time. At least they didn't cancel the show - it's postponed until next week, so we'll definitely try and be there.

Today it's a bit cooler in Austin. Only 87 degrees, woo hoo! A relative cold front! I'm off for my bike coaching tonight, we're doing sprints on the Veloway / South MoPac area. Should be, urm, fun? Hopefully my right foot will hold up, it's been a little sore from all this running last week (and silly me wore high heels to work today, which are currently kicked off underneath my desk!).

On that note, better get back to it...

Marble Falls Triathlon

This morning we got up super early to drive out to Marble Falls for a triathlon. It was an international distance triathlon: 1km swim, 23mi bike, 4.4mi run. Marble Falls is located in the hill country... which means lots of nice hills on the bike! It's actually not that far from Austin, only about a 45 minute drive. We got there about 5:45am, so plenty of time for Gordon to get setup before his wave went off at 7am. I decided to sit this one out and instead I volunteered to try my hand at taking some race photos and have fun cheering for my husband!

It was a lot of fun taking photos, even if my in-focus to out-of-focus ratio was only 1:4! I also spent a lot of time scouting locations and taking photos of the other racers as practise. It was a good way to enjoy the race - I got to cheer for Gordon as well as have some fun taking photos. You can check out the photos at: www.pbase.com/gordonmcgregor/marblefalls06

The next race on the schedule is the "Blanco Outback Triathlon" on August 5th. This time I will be racing and Gordon will be taking photos!

Hardest bike workout this year...

Last night I did my hardest bike workout for the year. I had my first coaching session with Matt and he dragged Sara and I up several tough hills, made us max. out our heart rate and then sprint for 50 yards. It was really, really tough and boy am I feeling it today! It feels like I drank several glasses of wine last night and I haven't had a drink since Tuesday night! I think I need to get out for an easy spin on the bike tonight, just to loosen up my legs a bit.


I'm off to meet my adorable husband for lunch soon. We haven't had lunch together on a workday for ages!

Bike Time Trial

Last night I did the monthly Run-FAR bike time trial on South MoPac. It's an 8mi loop and you get chip timed. It was a scorcher last night - 103F (39.5C!). So yeah, pretty hot. We're having a hot week in Austin that's for sure! After a decent 20 minute warm-up I started the time trial. The last time I did this TT was last August (post-Vineman) and I averaged 22.2mph. Last night I was just hoping to come in around 21mph, and use this as a benchmark for future improvement (there's another TT in August and September). I decided to push bigger gears last night and maintain a lower cadence than usual (85rpm compared to 95rpm). I definitely felt it in my legs, which were getting pretty tired by the end. My sprint finish was done on very wobbly legs! But I really feel that I gave it everything I had last night and I came away with a 22.2mph average :) This isn't the fastest I've ever done (fastest was 22.9mph pre-Vineman last year) but certainly not the slowest. I'm satisfied with my result. I'm also really looking forward to hopefully seeing some improvement after some coaching sessions with Matt!

Tonight my tired legs get to do some trail running with Nedra, then a much-needed soak in Barton Springs afterwards. It's going to be another sizzler of a day - maximum of 102F, right around the time I'll be running. Thank goodness the trail will be shady!

Fingers crossed for a cool change... then again, it's only mid-July and summer has really only just begun. Eeek.

Book club tonight

Tonight I'm hosting our book club get together to review the book that we read last month "The Time Traveller's Wife". Gordon's going to help me cook and we've devised quite a tasty menu - pears wrapped in prosciutto, hummus with toasted pita, grape and bleu cheese salad, mushroom olive and arugula pizzas, and asparagus risotto. Should be pretty tasty! Looks like there will be a good group of us and I'm looking forward to showing off our new place!

Post-weekend catchup

The weekend was really good, much quieter than the past couple of weekends! We started out with a run on Saturday morning in the hot, humid air. We just ran around the neighbourhood (did 6.5 miles) and held a pretty good pace. Followed that up with home cooked crepe style pancakes with fresh cherries and bananas... yum! Saturday afternoon we went and bought a few bits and pieces for the house and then we cooked a very yummy 3-course meal on Saturday night. We made roasted tomato soup, followed by scallops, then chocolate fudge with fresh Richter raspberries for dessert. It was delicious! We just pottered around most of the evening, cooking, chatting, building our new bookcase, talking to Mum & Dad. Sunday morning we got up early and met the Rogue group for a bike ride. Rode 360 from the Arboretum, up Bee Caves to 71 and back. Total distance was 32 miles and kept a fairly solid pace. Had breakfast at Uno's afterwards - the usual ham, egg and cheese panini that we used to have after our Saturday morning swim sessions last year. We're not normally up that way anymore so it was fun to pop in there for breakfast! Later that day we met up with Gordon's work colleagues at Emma Long Park for a late afternoon picnic. It was lovely and cool and breezy underneath the Pecan trees, and we had some tasty BBQ from County Line and sat around relaxing. It was a really fun weekend.

I won't be quitting my day job!

This morning I took part in a video shoot for a new Freescale corporate video. It was a lot of fun, and hard work! It was interesting to see the production company working the shoot, and I really enjoyed seeing the whole creative process unfold. The whole video will run for about 2 minutes, so I may get about 10 seconds of fame :) It was a good way to spend a Thursday morning! Now I need to get back to work...

Bike riding in Monteray... 03 July 2006

Today we caught the bus to Monterey, hired bikes and cycled along the scenic 17-mile drive to Pebble Beach. It was cold and quite breezy! We had a lot of fun though, even if the bikes were a lot harder to ride than our road bikes. We definitely got a workout! It was really cool to ride by the ocean. We stopped for lunch at a great little restaurant called "Fishwifes" and had yummy fish sandwiches, then got back on the bikes and rode back to Monterey. That evening we went to the restaurant "Bouchee" in Carmel and had an utterly delicious 3-course meal. We had a great bottle of Shiraz from Kangaroo Island (near my hometown of Adelaide) and the food was just unbelievably good.

Blog... hic! (02 July 2006)

So we spent the afternoon wine tasting in Carmel Valley and well that was interesting! We decided to take the bus because we didn't have a rental car and surprisingly enough there was a grapevine express that took us to some of the cellar doors.

Now I have to say that first of all I find Californian wine overpriced and not that tasty! Second, every winery charges you $5 per person for a wine tasting and then they proceed to give you a whole bunch of elitist attitude... Not cool!

We've given California a couple of chances now and every time we're disappointed. It seems that the only thing people care about here is money and social standing and the scenery is quite blah really. Give me the wineries of Adelaide or the friendliness of Texans any day!

... hic

Beach running in Carmel... 02 July 2006

So Gordon and I went for a run along the beach this morning. We had such a good time racing each other and trying not to get soaked by the waves! We were racing each other at one point and a car load of people ended up cheering us on, it was great. Definitely one of our top 5 runs of all time.

Top 5 runs
1. Mont Royal in Montreal
2. Cibolo Creek Ranch in Big Bend
3. Seacliff in Adelaide
4. Carmel in California
5. Big Cow in Austin

Carmel, 01 July 2006

So we're here in Carmel. It's cold! I've forgotten what 65 degrees feels like and I'm so used to hot weather now! So far we've taken it pretty easy and just walked around Carmel, had coffee, shopped a bit, had some good food, watched the soccer, and just enjoyed each other's company. It's been fun!