Had an eventful day yesterday. Myself, Niall and Kev headed down to Kangaroo Valley for another downhill run on the bikes. Tom stayed at home as he hurt his back playing squash with Billy. We had a much more streamlined operation than the last time, and planned to do the run twice. First one was great fun and uneventful, apart from me hitting a top speed of 68.7kmh on the tarmac run back to the car. Kev also made it to the top of the long hill without putting a foot down. None of the rest of us have managed it yet.

After a bit of food we got the car shuffle underway and were all ready at the top of the second run around 2pm. Niall led the way and got a puncture almost immediately. Luckily we had tubes this time, so we just swapped a new one in and kept going. Kev made it over the big hill without stopping again, and I took over the lead for the second half. Toward the end of the run there were a few jumps in a row. First was good, the second was much better, but I landed the thrid one all wrong and I came off the bike at around 30kmh.

I bounced and rolled a bit and once I stopped I couldn’t breathe at all for about 10secs. I faded out a bit and heard the two guys telling me to stay down. I remember thinking to myself “oh yeah, I’ve crashed my bike”, so there must have been a period before that when I had no idea what was going on. Kev said that I was shaking, and was ghost white, then green for a bit. I was going to stay where I was for a bit and get my breath back, as I was seriously winded, but I was lying in amongst a load of bull ants, so I had to move. The colour returned to my cheeks a minute or two later, and after a while I was able to get back on the bike and take the rest of the ride very easy. Kev and Niall did a great job making sure I was OK and taking my bike apart for the ride back to Sydney.

I took this morning off work to get my ribs checked as they were really sore. I had an x-ray and all is ok, so I’ll just have to put up wiht the pain for a couple of days until it heals up a little. I’ll also have to cut back on the extreme mountain biking for a bit ;-)

B: 35km – R: 3.2km – W: 2 sessions – Row: 1km

Regular readers (that’s probably just me ;-) will notice that there’s very little exercise being done this week, so let me explain. I’m working in Canberra this week, and since the office is a 10min walk from my hotel, there’s little opportunity to get a big cycle in. Secondly, I’m following a fairly simple training principle: give your body time to adapt. The principle is: do 3 weeks of training, then ease back for a week to let your body consolidate the gains made in those 3 weeks. That’s the best way to avoid injuries & overtraining.

Another injury-free tip is to increase your distance OR your speed by 10% per week, but not your distance AND your speed. So far I haven’t been sticking to this very well:

Jan 12-18: 32km

Jan 19-25: 60km

Jan 16- Feb 1: 85km

R: 3.2km – W: 2 sessions – Row: 1km

Has anyone noticed how crazy Americans have become? I’m not talking about Idiot Bush, but rather the attitudes of the America populace as a whole.

I’ve always found it very revealing that Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about having sex with an intern. So far, Dumb Ass has lied about WMDs in order to start a war which has resulted in the deaths of 500+ of his own countrymen, and there’s no sign of impeachment hearings at all. That’s just crazy if you ask me.

And now we have the furore over Janet Jackson’s breast making an appearance in the SuperBowl. Quite a few ads have women bouncing around in next to nothing (5 Cougars thanks!), yet a couple of seconds of real breast causes consternation.

Finally, just when you’d think everything had calmed down again, we get this: NBC asks ER to remove a scene where an 80 year old woman’s breast appears for two seconds.

It’s laughable.

I’ve decided to swap resolutions #4 and #1. After all, I don’t really care what weight I am, as long as I lose the gut ;-)

I’ve never set down fitness resolutions for this year, so here they are:

1. Get back to my normal weight of approx. 80kg
2. Complete a sprint distance triathlon (or longer)
3. Complete a 2km+ ocean swim
4. Get my body fat under 14%

I’m aiming at No.1 first, for the simple reason that it will make all the others easier. In fact, I expect that meeting #1 will also take care of #4. As for #2, a sprint triathlon is a 750m swim, a 20km bike and a 5km run, but I’d really prefer to Have accomplished an Olympic distance one (1.5/40/10km) but I don’t think there is one in the second half of the year. I’ll have to work a lot on running for that though.

So, there you have it. It’s officially ‘on paper’ so I can look back on it next year and castigate or congratulate myself accordingly.

Had a long day yesterday! 6 hours and about 30km of off-road cycling. Myself, Tom, Kev and Niall headed up to the Blue Mountains to have a go at The Oaks Trail. Left Bondi just before 9am, drove to Glenbrook, parked the cars and hopped onto the 10.02 train to Woodford.

After a bit of faffing, we hit the trail. It started off with short downhills followed by short uphills for a few kilometres. The new shocks were working perfectly and it was a lot easier to go fast and maintain control. Tom was the first casualty of the day, going over the handlebars on one downhill. Kevin had already fallen off his bike, but that happens so often it’s no longer regarded as exceptional. A third of the way through the trail we found the helipad area. There was a couple of bits of tree trunks lying about, which provided the perfect opportunity for everyone to practice their bunny-hops.

Shortly afterwards we hit the main downhill section and we took off. I nailed a maximum speed of 53kmh down one section, an indication of how well the shocks were working. Myself and Kevin stopped half way down to wait for Niall and Tom. When they still hadn’t arrrived 15mins later we figured something must be wrong, so we started cycling back up the hill. Rounded the previous corner to see the lads watching someone fix Niall’s puncture. We’d seen the guy having a rest and a drink as we flew past. Niall had gotten a puncture somewhere up the trail and since the repair kits were with myself and Kev, he’d stopped to ask this guy if he had a patch. The poor man volunteered to fix the puncture, only to find that there turned out to be four punctures in the tube! Got all that sorted out, then took off again. At the end of the downhill run, we hopped the National Park gate and headed off on the singletrack part of the trail. We’d covered about 1km when Niall got another two punctures, in the same tyre, so we stopped to fix that. We decided that in future we’d all bring two tubes so we wouldn’t have to deal with punctures again!

The rest of the singletrack changed between nice wooded sections through the trees to more technical, rocky downhill sections and a couple of kms later we ended up in a car park. We weren’t sure where to go from there, so we followed the tar road, splashed through the creek and stopped. We were faced with a very steep hill, which we were hoping to avoid having to climb, but a couple of passing bikers told us that the hill was the way out. Just what we needed to finish the day: a bloody long, steep hill. Thankfully it wasn’t as long as we thought it was going to be, and 6 hours after we’d started the trail, we reached the top, with lots of needed drinking water available from the fountain.

A quick cycle back to the cars, a change of clothes and we headed into Glenbrook for a perve at all the cool bike gear in Cycle Fantasy. There was a lovely Ellsworth frame for $3250!! A couple of Coopers later and we were on the road back to Sydney.

All in all it was a bloody long day, and everyone was exhausted. We’d cycled around 35km, 30 of which was the trail itself, and it had turned out to be a fair bit hillier that we’d expected. We’d also learned to have a couple of tubes with us in future!

B: 80km

Weighed in at 88.0kg this morning. That’s one kilo lost in two weeks which is a fairly respectable rate.

Went to Woolys yesterday to get my new shocks. Thought I wouldn’t have them in time to do the Oaks Trail today, but the guys said they’d see what they could do. Went for some breakfast with Jacqui, and as we were walking back to the car, I got a call to say my bike was ready. Picked it up only to see that they’d thrown in a free pump, replaced a broken brake for free, and dropped about $40 off the total price! Now that’s service for you.

Have decided not to get a new bike, but will get a new shock put on my existing bike. I’ve had the Rock Shox Duke SC Air recommented to me, so I’ve gone with that and I’ve also asked them to put clip-in pedals on the vike too. I’ll drop the bike in tomorrow and hopefully it will be ready on Sunday. There’s a vague plan to do the Oak Trail on Sunday, so if the bike is ready in time it will be a perfect opportunity to try out the fork.

B: 45km

Now that the cycle computer is working, it tracks the distance for me. I reset it last night, and it’s now showing 15.9km. Up until now I’d thought that I was cycling 12km a day, whereas it turns out that I’m actually cycling closer to 16km. I’ll call it a nice round 15km.

Body Fat today is 18.6%, down 0.6% from last week. Though I still have a bit of a gut, I’m no longer considered medically overweight. I’m now ‘Healthy’.

B: 30km