Here’s a list of the Top Ten Catastrophes of the Third Year of American Iraq. No.4 is particularly instructive:

4. The US military used Kurdish and Shiite troops to attack the northern Turkmen city of Talafar in August. Kurdish troops, drawn from the Peshmerga militia, were allowed to paint lasers on targets in the city, which were then destroyed by the US air force. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed, and much of the population was displaced for some time. Shiite troops and local Shiite Turkmen informants were used to identify and interrogate alleged Sunni insurgents. Turkey was furious at the attack on ethnically related Turkmen and threatened to halt its cooperation with the US. Although the attack was allegedly undertaken to capture foreign forces allegedly based in the city, only 50 were announced apprehended. The entire operation ended up looking like a joint Kurdish-Shiite attack on Sunni Turkmen, backed by the US military. Turkmen and Kurds do not generally get along, and Turkmen accuse Kurds of wanting to ethnically clense them from Kirkuk. The entire operation was politically the worst possible public relations for the US in northern Iraq, and seems unlikely to have put a signficant dent in the guerrillas’ capabilities.

Now, the U.S. military would have to be either incredibly malicious, or have a pretty retarded set of experts on the region to allow that to happen, wouldn’t they?

Oh yeah, the ex-Iraqi Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, has said that the country is in the middle of a civil war. Freedom, democracy, etc.

Myself, Niall, Kev and Tom drove out to the base of the Blue Mountains on Sunday morning to do some mountain biking around the Yarramundi Working Week Series (WWS) race track in Yellowmundi Regional Park. It was raining as we left the house, so we were prepared for the worst, but by the time we go to the track it was a lovely sunny day.

We had a couple of issues locating the track, but once on it we had a great time swooping around banked turns, in between trees and bushes and across creeks. The first loop was around 3km, after which there was a bit more searching for the other half of the lap. That turned out to be more technical, with some rocky descents requiring decent bike control. There was also a nice, steep downhill section onto a bridge over a creek which was tough, though myself and Niall backtracked to give it a second go and managed to complete it without having to put a foot down. After a little more rocky stuff we were back to banked turns through tall grass and a last little bit through the trees to finish the lap.

After a bit of a rest we decided to head out on another lap, and since we knew where to go this time, and everyone knew what to expect, we wouldn’t be stopping all the time comparing notes on the various sections. Everything seemed easier this time, particularly the rocky section, though I took three attempts to do the downhill/stream section properly, as I came in on the wrong line the first time, then couldn’t my shoes clipped in soon enough the second time. We still had one or two regroups stops, and managed to see a White-bellied Sea Eagle sitting in a tree watching us go by. I presume it must have have been hunting along the Hawkesbury river.

We were all pretty tired by the end of the second lap, and running out of water in the 30C+ heat, so we called it a day and headed home. It was an enjoyable course, with its own unique character and quite different from Sparrow Hill or Penrose. We now have to organise trips to Newcastle and Lithgow to ride the other two WWS courses. The lads are coming down to Canberra again in two weeks for another MTB extravaganza, so this time I’ll be sure to bring the video camera and get some footage.

B: 62.1km – R: 5.7km

I picked my bike up from Kevin’s place on Monday night and started commuting by bike again on Wednesday and Thursday. No laps of the park, just straight in and out of work. I’m also going to take the aerobars off tomorrow, and revert to normal roadie positioning, as I don’t have any races for the forseeable future.

Got home last night and went out for what was supposed to be a 6km run only to have the same shit flare up from Monday. I stopped a couple of times to try out different lacing patterns in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort but none worked, so I abandoned after about 2km. I’m not going to run for the rest of the week and just rest and stretch and start again on Monday. Hopefully that will be enough to solve the problem. If it’s not, then the whole half marathon plan could be out the window ;-(

B: 45km – R: 5.3km

Headed off for a 5km run this evening but had to cut it short because my right foot was hurting. I’m not sure what was causing it, but any time I’ve had it before it was just my laces being too tight, but that was certainly not the case this time. Decided it was better to be safe than sorry, so will do a lot of stretching before my next scheduled run on Wednesday.

R: 3.2km

I submitted my application for Skills Assessment to the Australian Computer Society today, the first stage in the process of applying for residency. They say to expect a decision within 8 to 10 weeks, so fingers crossed ;-)

I got a good long run in on Friday. We were going to Macmasters Beach for the weekend with Jacqui’s family, so I decided to move my long run forward from Saturday to make sure I got it done.

Ran from the top of my road, down to the golf course, then did almost two laps of that, for a total running time of 55mins. The plan called for a 9.6km run, and I’d done 50mins last week, so I figured 55mins should be sufficient. My HR was pretty high at the end of it (around 170) but I think that was mainly because I was pretty dehydrated by then. I’ll have to start bringing some water with me on the long runs.

When I got home I fired up Google Earth and measured the run at 9.7km. It’s 2km from my house to the golf course, then each lap is 4.25km, and the I stopped 800m short of completing the the second lap.

I spent the weekend recovering as my quads and achilles were both reasonably tight. Lots of stretching and taking it easy.

R: 15km

I got a couple of runs in last week while in Canberra, culminating in a 50min run on Friday which went pretty well. My lower legs were pretty sore after it, and by the time I’d finished all the MTBing over the weekend my quads were pretty sore too, so I skipped my Monday run.

I ventured out last night and decided to take it easy for 30mins. The plan I’m following called for a 5km run, but I decided to keep my average HR around 150 and to see how far I could go inside the half hour. It turned out to be 5.3km this week, but the intention is to use this as kind of a test session as the weeks progress.

R: 5.3km

While U.S. troops are busy spreading Freedom & Democracyâ„¢ throughout Iraq, it turns out the very government espousing that Freedom & Democracyâ„¢ is happily censoring the web sites its soldiers are allowed to visit. Turns out that well known left-leaning sites are excluded, while right-wing commentators are de riguer.

When we all started going mountain biking together about two years ago, we used to head up to the Blue Mountains and ride the fire trails. It was good fun in a ‘great to be outdoors away from the city’ way, but it was fairly straightforward. After all, the trails are built so fire control vehicles can access forest fires, so other than being rough ground, they’re not exactly challenging on a bike.

Then myself and Tom started bringing our bikes down to Canberra on the weeks we were working there, we discovered singletrack and we haven’t looked back. Canberra is full of great singletrack through almost every forest in the region, built and maintained by the good folks at Canberra Off-Road Cyclists (CORC).

For those who’ve no idea what I’m on about, singletrack is like a one person wide path, weaving in and out amongst the trees, over logs & rocks, into and out of gullies, uphill, downhill, under branches and over jumps. In short, it’s great fun, requires constant attention and, depending on how fast you ride it, can be as difficult as you want to make it. It’s what MTBing is all about.

Myself and Tom have been going on about it to Kevin and Niall for months and months, telling them that they had to organise a weekend in Canberra. Well, last weekend it finally happened, and they joined myself and Tom for an MTB weekend in the capital. They arrived on Saturday morning, checked in to the hotel, got the bikes ready, then we all headed off to meet Paul for a ride around Majura Pines. We arrived back at the hotel 4.5 hours later exhilarated, thoroughly exhausted and with a couple of cuts and bruises spread throughout the group. After a shower and a short rest it was off to Debacle for some good food and quality Belgian beers. We were in bed shortly after 10 ;-)

Sunday morning saw us up early and off to Sparrow Hill, a 23km loop of twisting singletrack just outside Queanbeyan. We only managed to get half the loop done as we had to get back to the hotel in time to check out, but it certainly grabbed our attention and we’ll be heading back there asap to give the full lap a go.

We checked out of the hotel, grabbed some lunch and then headed back to Sydney, but not before Kev had locked his keys in the car! While waiting for the NRMA to rescue the keys, we checked out some bike porn at Mal Adjusted before finally getting on the road. Our last stop of the trip was Penrose State Forest just north of Marulan, about half-way between Canberra and Sydney. I’d seen the forest many a time on the way to Canberra and had wondered about riding around in it, but I thought it was just fire trails. It was only when Tom picked up a copy of Australian Mountain Bike mag which contained a trail map for the forest that we realised there was a lot more to it than met the eye.

It turns out that the forest hosts a round of the Working Week Series (five 8hr MTB races = 40hr week – geddit?), as does Sparrow Hill, so we decided to ride the competition trail. It was brilliant, and took us 1h15m, including a couple of regrouping stops and one or two detours where the trail was a bit ambiguous. By this time everyone’s legs were tired after almost 8 hours of MTBing spread over the two days, so it was time to call a halt to proceedings and head back to Sydney.

Needless to say, Kev & Niall are now total converts and there’ll be many more MTB trips in the future. Now all I need to do is convince them to enter an MTB enduro race as a team…

B: 114.7km – R: 19.5km

Great post from Bruce Schneier on the future of privacy.

In a sense, we’re living in a unique time in history. Identification checks are common, but they still require us to whip out our ID. Soon it’ll happen automatically, either through an RFID chip in our wallet or face-recognition from cameras. And those cameras, now visible, will shrink to the point where we won’t even see them.