How was your Saturday?

I spent most of mine on a bike, 5.5 hours to be exact, in the rain, going up and down hills for 90 miles.

It's 4:30pm, we just got home an hour ago. Now I'm eating pizza and watching the BBC series "Dr. Who".

Cricket

For those of you who read this blog, you may be thinking "WTF is cricket?".

Cricket is a game of skill, patience and afternoon tea breaks. It is an awesome game and Australia kicks ass.

Every two years, Australia plays England in a series of matches called "The Ashes". It is cricket's oldest and most intense rivalries and the location alternates between Australia and England. It started in 1882. The name came about after England's home series defeat in 1882 led to a mock newspaper obituary, and when England won in Australia next time round, a bail-burning ceremony in Melbourne resulted in the ashes being placed inside an urn, and being presented to the winning captain.

Speeding forward, from 1989 to 2005 Australia were unbeaten. In 2005 England managed to make a comeback and won the series. This surprised everybody, not least the Australians who had probably become a little complacent. After all, it's hard to keep improving and retaining your edge when you are the world dominators of the sport.

The 2006/2007 Ashes series, played in Australia, has just concluded. Australia won 5-0, meaning that we gave those whingeing Poms a royal spanking.

I don't really follow cricket much these days, but I remember fantastic days spent at Adelaide Oval with Dad, Kate, my Uncle Bert and cousin Sharyn, watching the cricket. Warm, sunny skies, mexican waves, the whistles of the drunken yobbos sitting on the beer hill under the scoreboard as all the cute women walked past them, and swarming onto the grounds at the end of a match to shake the hands of a cricketer. Once I even managed to shake the hand of Viv Richards from the West Indies, one of the greatest batsman to ever play the game.

Ah, those were the days.

Tree House Fridge

While reading my daily technology update I came across the "Tree House Refrigerator".

Apparently when you go to take an apple out of the fridge it feels like you're picking it from a tree. There's also what looks like a birdhouse for storing your eggs. I admire the creative thinking, but really?

Full article here.

Ironman Arizona Week 9: Going long...

9 weeks down, 15 weeks to go.

This past week we did our first really long workouts - 17mi long run and 85mi bike ride. As indicated in a previous post, it was also the week that gave me a dose of Ironman reality check. Up until last week, the workouts have been tough but nothing too much tougher than what I've endured during half ironman training (although I have consistently done a lot more running this time). But last week switched us into Ironman training gear, with the longest run and bike ride that I've done in a while. I've only ever done one bike ride over 70 miles (Shiner ride back in May) and the last time I ran 17 miles was back in December 2004! The only thing I didn't do last week was swim, which isn't such a big deal considering that I'm most comfortable in the swim. I got back in the pool this morning.

The long run was pretty tough. We did this on Friday after our bike trainer workout Thursday night. Fortunately the legs didn't feel too tired. The first 15.5 miles felt pretty decent, but the last 2.5 miles (we over achieved) was tough. I had to really stay focused to keep going and I have to admit that I took a couple of 30s walk breaks during the last mile, but I picked up the pace for the last 0.25mi so I think that makes up for it :) It had been raining off and on for the whole run and once I stopped it started bucketing down. Now I have a couple of long rainy runs under my belt, which is always a good thing to have.

The long ride on Saturday was surprisingly not too bad, for the first 75 miles. We biked a reasonably hilly course so that made it a bit tougher and my legs were already tired from running the day before. I paid more attention to my calorie intake and took in about 1700 calories for 5 hours on the bike (5:45 total ride time), not quite enough but getting close. I ran out of water for the last hour and so didn't eat anything which is probably a big part of the reason I got so tired in the last 45 minutes. I also wanted to pick up the cadence during the last 45 minutes but pedaling faster was hurting my butt on the saddle so it was a frustrating trade-off. But I didn't get a flat today, woo hoo! Others did, and we stopped and waited which made it really hard to get started again, but I figure if I stop and wait for someone then they'll return the favour some day if I need it!

Goal hours: 14.5

Actual hours: 12.9

Bike: 6.15hrs / 108 miles

Run: 6.75hrs/ 42.45 miles

Swim: 0hrs

Happy New Year!

We definitely rung in the New Year in style.

It all started with last minute (4pm) phone calls to several Austin restaurants trying to find somewhere to dine at a reasonable hour. After Uchi and Zoot both only had 10pm reservations available, we jumped at the chance to get a 5pm reservation at Wink... but that of course meant jumping in the shower and getting ready in 20 minutes, which I managed to do and still look half decent!

So we started the evening at Wink with their seven course "2007 Celebration" tasting menu, which consisted of seared tuna, gnocchi with black truffles, seared lamb, lobster, duck, venison, cheese platter, then we ordered their trio dessert of lemon meringue pot, creme brulee and warm chocolate pudding... it was all so delicious and surprisingly I didn't feel too stuffed at the end. This restaurant is so classy, we even had chilled cutlery for the seared lamb and extra warm cutlery for the duck. It was fantastic. We talked about our plans for 2007, laughed, reminisced about 2006... it was a wonderful dinner.

Afterwards we parked near Jack and Adam's and walked over to see Blue Lapis Light do their show on the side of the Radisson. It was good, although not as good as Requiem (the show we saw back in October) but it was free and it was fun standing in the middle of the city and seeing them dance and abseil down the side of the Radisson! Afterwards we caught a pedicab over to Jack and Adam's and hung out at their New Years Eve party for an hour or so. We saw quite a few of our friends there and it was pretty relaxed and fun. We left around 10:30pm, planning on going to another friend's party but we were feeling so tired by then that we came home and chilled out and just barely managed to make it to midnight, before falling fast asleep around 12:15pm.

It was a great way to spend New Years Eve. Hello 2007!