Phlogging A Tired Horse

A good walk

2007-12-27T12:14:00.000+13:00

Boxing day was another quiet day, Number 1 son and his girlfriend disappeared remarkably early and left me at home with very little to do. The weather was no inspiring, one of those mixed days with a bit of rain , a bit of sun, a bit of cloud but an awful lot of wind.

I was thinking about going for a ride today but the weather was just so off putting and I was going to ride on my own so I decided to can it. As my wife’ car was in the car park at work and I had eaten and drank too much over the past few days I decided to walk the 16.5 kms into work and get the car. I loaded up on mp3s and started to walk in. I did have a backup plan of catching a bus if I got too bored by the whole thing.

I was also keen to stop at the camera shop on the way, my expectation for it to actually being open on this public holiday was not high, and that expectation was met ! I was kinda disappointed as I was going to buy myself the “nifty fifty” Canon 50mm 1.8 lens as it is so cheap. There is always another day.

I made it all the way in to town OK, got a small blister on the top of one of my toes from not wearing socks, but apart from that I was felling good.

I spoke to my wife and son in Australia and had a quick word with my mother-in-law as well. She has taken a turn for the better again and has been eating and drinking well for the first time in 3 days. I am not sure how I feel about this as it is inevitable she is not going to come out of hospital, and she is having more bad days than good, but you do not wish the end on someone. The good news in this was the family over there were able to have Christmas together, even though it was day late.

After dinner I drove out to Piha to get some low light long exposure shots of the water and the rocks and maybe catch a decent sun set. It was really windy out there is as expected but I did find a reasonable sheltered spot and took a dozen or so shots before the rain started to seriously threaten and I went back to the car. There was no sunset to speak of.

When I got home I somehow stuffed up the copy of the files from my camera to my laptop and deleted the whole lot. Hopefully I can recover with some file recovery software that someone suggested to me today, otherwise I will have to head back out there again tonight.

So no photo today !

A quiet Christmas

2007-12-26T12:31:00.000+13:00

Christmas day was very different this year, when I woke at 6.00 there was no one home but me, no children piling in wanting to open presents, no surly teenagers not wanting to be roused, no wife to make coffee for and wish happy Christmas with a kiss. Just (not so) little ol' me.

I got up early and had a coffee and surfed the net for a while before breakfast, more coffee and some quality time with the new William Gibson novel “spook country” that I have loaned from the library. This is a damn fine book, and worth the, never ending, wait for a new Gibson.

My two eldest and I had plans to head up to Mangawhai to join my sisters family and my mother for lunch. They arrived on time and we had a small exchanging of gifts, saving the bulk of the gift giving to when my wife and youngest child return from Australia.

The drive to Mangawhai was worse than I expected, Christmas day is supposed to be quiet on the roads, at more than one point we were stopped on the motorway and the run through Orewa was as slow as any summers day. It was a quiet time at the caravan, we ate, we exchanged gifts, we huddled under gazebo to avoid the semi-constant rain. A reasonable typical Christmas day in Auckland. The kids and I went up to the surf beach but the surf was awful and not worth the effort of getting wet for.

After an early dinner we left for home and at a toilet stop in Orewa I took a couple of pictures of the Norfolk pines, I am trying to get am in camera blur action going but have not had much success yet, though today’s efforts were an improvement. The picture below, which I happen to really like was blurred in Photoshop.

I am thinking of getting this printed large for the lounge as I really like it, though it would be interesting to see how well it comes out in a large size, it may need to be lightened a touch.

Christmas Eve

2007-12-25T07:30:00.000+13:00

Well, here I am, Christmas morning and I am sitting alone in bed with my computer on my lap typing up a blog entry listening to Diary of Dreams. My wife and youngest son are in Australia with her dying mother, my oldest son is staying the night at his girlfriends and my daughter is flatting. At least they will be coming here later this morning and we will all head up to Mangawhai to spend the afternoon with my sisters family and mum.

My love for photography and my belief in myself as a photographer go through a fairly regular up and down cycle. The ups ae ususally bought on by taking one or a set of pictures I really like and then downs by the lack if being able to see anything at all. One of my Flickr friends has just posted a small set of images taken from Murawai the other night. I look at her pictures and I wonder if we went to the same place, here is a link to one of her shots. Eva's photos always inspire me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/czakusia/2132295179/

What I find most frustrating is I walked past this scene on the way back to the car but was busy talking to someone and did not stop for a while, I even looked at the rocks and the sun and thought about stopping but did not. This is the key difference between being a good and a bad photographer. Taking those opportunities to stop and photograph the possibilites. Some days I could just kick myself.

Yesterday was an OK day at work, averagely busy though there was a real sense of disinterest through out the office. Fortunately we all got to leave early and I walked around to some friends house for a drink and some food. Had a pleasant evening talking shit and they offered to drive me home.

I had a couple of “where are you, and when are you coming home texts” from number 1 son and he told me he was going to wait at home till I got there and then disappear to his girlfriends for the night as he wanted to give me his Christmas present.

All I could really say was wow ! He had made us a coffee table at work. It has been beautifully constructed from hard wood, with a top of inlayed wood. It really is a magnificent piece of work and I was so proud of what he had done. Like his late grandad he is a real craftsman.

Here is a quick shot of it I took last night.

A Big Sunday

2007-12-24T14:52:00.001+13:00

Yesterday afternoon I gave the single speed some love and attention, well I oiled the chain at least and today I took it out for its first Woodhill spin in a while. The bike behaved Ok, though I did have to adjust the chain tension once to stop the wheel rubbing on the chain stay. I must get that wheel straightened (or replaced).

The day started out beautifully and I planned on getting along to the waterfront later in the day for a light run and a quick swim, but as usual it all turned to custard late morning with a nice down pour at Woodhill while we were sucking down post ride coffees. Fortunately that was it for rain but the day was not conducive to the first swim of the summer.

We had a good ride, there was three of us in the group and we maintained a reasonable pace, I was the pace setter so I thought it was reasonable anyway. We rode Back road, Upland, Lightening, Haggis, Link and back to the car park, In was really happy with the ride up Upland and the length of Haggis, I kept a reasonably even pace, not terribly slow and managed to ride the whole thing quite comfortably, which did surprise me. I expected to struggle a bit more than I did. Though it was not a huge ride or a fast ride I was really pleased with the outcome as I was not trashed at the end. Back Road is riding nicely, I did quite a bit of work on that trail before I got sick and am quite keen to go back and change a couple of sections at some stage.

I was planning on doing very little until late afternoon and then attempting a 10k run followed by a swim at high tide. Some of the Flickr folk decided to head up to Murawai for some sun set shots so I took an early 9km run from Lopdell House to the end of Exhibition drive and back. The idea was test my fitness after a ride and a run the day before. I just managed to get back to the car, it was really hot and it was a slow run, but at least I proved to myself I am getting fitter.

Shot up to Murawai for some sun set photography but the sun and cloud were not coming to the party so there was not a lot of sunset action happening. I did get a couple of shots of the gannets and this was the best effort.

I have also downloaded a bootleg of the recent Led Zeppelin reunion gig. It is not too bad so far.

I had a chat with my wife in Australia tonight, her mum seems to have improved slightly from this morning, however the prognosis is not that good for her lasting much past Christmas. We are all just waiting for the end to come now.

All up it was a pretty busy day and I was quite glad to go to bed in the end. Oh yes - I have the new William Gibson - Spook Country - from the library, another good reason to get to bed early.

Food glorious food

2007-12-22T20:16:00.000+13:00

The fourth day of the steps was hard work, I struggled to the top, if I had been walking with some one else and they suggested a break I would have taken it!.

I am reasonably pleased with how things have gone, I have done the steps every day this week, I have run and ridden and that is a whole lot more than I have been doing for the past three to four months.

We had our team Christmas lunch on Thursday and then drinks on Friday. I missed the Friday steps and ate far too much over those 2 days. I got some very nice chocolates from the secret santa so have been pigging out on those as well. With my entire family away from home at the moment there is not a lot else to do in the evenings after a couple of drinks at work 

Saturday was a quiet day, Number 1 son did not appear home from his girlfriends place so I did the house work, picked up a gift for my aunty as she is having a Christmas BBQ this afternoon.

I did get out for a run, Exhibition drive yet again. I run this stretch of road as it is quiet and familiar, I know every bend in the road and can monitor my fitness accordingly. I took a slow start and maintained the slow pace for the first half, but it felt good, the best I have felt since the surgery. My ankle was stiff for only a short time and I finally got into a good breathing rhythm and stayed there for the whole 3.25km. The return leg I moved the pace up a bit and again ran well for the whole leg, and knocked almost 2 minutes off of the first leg time. I was really pleased with the run and was not too knackered afterwards.

I intend on running again tomorrow after the bike ride.

I went to Aunty Lyn’s for the Christmas BBQ, it was an Ok evening, I am not big on family events, and I was driving so was not able to drink, which was probably good for my fitness, but I ate too much instead. I got home early and spent a quiet Saturday night in bed reading and eating nice chocolate.

I have not taken any photos for a week, my inspiration goes when there is no sun.

First Wednesday evening ride

2007-12-20T11:09:00.000+13:00

With Deana and youngest son away in Australia I am at liberty to pretty much do what I like when I like. It is not that I have any restrictions on my time but I do get a wee bit guilty every now and then when I go straight from the office to the mountain bike park.

When I left work I had a guilt free and loud trip up the motorway to the forest. The traffic was amazingly light and I ended up at the end of the motorway at least 20 minutes earlier than I expected. I could have gone up to the park and had a warm up ride before my riding buddies arrived, but, oh no, I chose to go to McDonalds for 2 chicken cheese burgers. Ok they are small and cheap and nice, but I really did not need them and I am not so sure I really enjoyed them either, but they did kill the spare time. Though half the riding crew turned up late so we didn’t get away until 6.45.

I was riding with an old riding friend but one I rarely ride with these days as we are in to different styles of riding. I have definitely trended to the longer cross country ride and he has moved into the short ride with lots of time spent sessioning the jumps and other stunts that litter Woodhill forest.

I took the Cindercone out again, though I had planned on riding the single speed. I am down to one comfortable seat and did not get a chance to swap it over before I left. The Cindercone has been riding OK , but the front hub has been on the way out for a while and was making some seriously bad noises by the end of the ride. It is time to retire that bike until I can spend some cash on it. To spend some cash I need to sell the AC first.

The ride was Ok, we rode at a reasonable pace between jumps but did have to stop for a session at each of the various structures. It was good to get some pace going again but in the end I did get frustrated with all the mucking around and left the boys after just over an hour and rode back to the car – which was round about the time my hub made loud clunking noises so I am glad I rode no further.

I definitely going to ride the single speed next time, I think I am strong enough, but it will be slow and painful to start with. I cannot wait to get back to the longer rides.

I took this photo on Sunday. I spent a fruitless hour or so wandering up to and around the domain looking for some tree photos and really found nothing that inspired me. I was early for dinner with friends so took a cruise along the waterfront and stopped for these boat sheds. I like the symmetery in the roofs.

Stairs

2007-12-19T08:33:00.000+13:00

Yesterday I started back on the once a day stair climb, though I am on the 18th floor there are only 14 flights of stairs from the main building foyer. I have done this twice now, both times I was puffing like a train at the top of the stairs but I made it in a reasonable time without stopping. My concerns about my loss of fitness are probably not entirely founded. I am in slightly better condition than I thought.

Hopefully I can keep the stair thing going for a while, but I do have a habit of failing to commit to the long term…

I had my second visit to the physio this morning, my ankle seems to be recovering a lot quicker than 3 month ago, the stretching and exercise I am doing seems to be benefiting. It will be great if this rate of progress can be maintained, by the end of January I should be back to full movement.

At the weekend I took a walk up to the Kitikiti Falls out at Piha with the aim of getting a couple of photos. Here is the best of them, I was lucky that the sun was coming through the clouds as I passed this palm

I was going to join the gym

2007-12-18T11:36:00.001+13:00

When I finally arrived back in New Zealand after my 7 day hospital stay in Hong Kong I was down to 75kg. This is the lightest I have been for what seems like forever. Even after 5 months of marathon training I only just broke the 80kg barrier around the time of the marathon. With almost 3 months off of any real aerobic exercise I had got back up to 83kg before I was sick. Sadly most or the weight loss was in my legs and glutes, though some body fat did go as well.

Once the cause of the infection was found and the correct anti-biotics given I stopped losing the weight and over the next few weeks started to recover what I had lost in mass, unfortunately it all appears to be gathering around my waist.

I am back into some light exercise again but with Christmas around the corner my diet is not the best either so I will be aiming to manage my weight and fitness until the new year.

I was given an option for another 2 weeks free at the local gym. I dropped in after work last night but it looks like it was going to be too much effort to get signed up after previously having a free fortnight a couple of years back. Given that I had semi-major surgery not that long ago and would be unable to use a lot of the equipment I decided to just stick with light running and riding until I am able to apply some pressure to my trunk.

I went for a light run along Exhibition Drive last night, 6.5 km of unsealed road. It is a nice flat run with no cars and great for getting back into things. I was really humid and warm and I suffered for the first kilometre until my ankle warmed up and I could get into a shuffling rhythm. I had a small amount of pain from my surgery but it was not unbearable and soon went away once I got my breathing sorted. The second half of the run was much easier than the first and I managed a couple of kilometres with a reasonable amount of fluidity. A slow run, but I believe I am getting better each time.

Ressurection ?

2007-12-17T13:11:00.000+13:00

I have been considering whether there is any value in resurrecting this blog after a substantial time off. The core purpose again will be to record my training progress in more detail than the spreadsheet, but I will also upload photos if I like them enough.

The last 10 months have been really busy, though I recall there were times I had these monumental periods of boredom when they was just nothing to do or I was too tired to it, from memory these often occurred while I was at work.

So, lets do a quick bullet point wrap up since Feb 27 2007.

• As planned I ran the Rotorua Marathon, I finished on my target time of 4:30 and I was less broken than I expected.

• I took up some off road running with a group of like minded folk and I managed a couple of great runs in the Waitakere Ranges before slipping on a wet rock and spraining my ankle quite badly. This happened in June and 12 weeks of physiotherapy later it was still stiff and often sore.

• I stopped going to physio when the physiotherapist went on leave for a 2 weeks and then I was on leave and then away from work for a week. The plan was to get back to gentle running and riding and coupled with some stretches see if the ankle recovered.

• I had been feeling really flat and lifeless so I took a couple of weeks off of work in September to kick things back off again. The plan was to do some gentle running, so riding, some photography and some mountain bike trail digging up at Woodhill Forest. The holiday started Ok but I ended up getting quite tired and the weather was not that friendly either. I did get half a track built but just ran out of puff.

• My first week back at work in October was to attend a conference in Hong Kong. I was really looking forward to this as I had never travelled to Asia before. I was still feeling flat when I went but ended up feeling really unwell when I got there and 3 doctors later was admitted to hospital with what turned out to be a liver abscess. I spent 7 days in hospital in Hong Kong before being well enough for the 10 hour flight back to NZ.

• After a week back in Auckland I had the abscess removed and was in hospital for a few days. The abscess was 5.5 cm in diameter. I spent about 2 weeks recovering before going back to work for part days and have an 8 inch scar to show for it.

• Going back to work was not too bad, I had a big pile of work to catch up on so kept myself quite busy and attentive. Work were great while I was off, very supportive, let me take the whole month as paid sick leave and flew my wife up to Hong Kong for 2 days which was great (insurance paid for the flights, but that was not the point !)

• I was about to start back working full time when my father got quite sick. What started out as a tooth ache ended up within 10 days as a fatal infection. My father had always been a fit man and had not had blood tests for decades. It turned out he had a blood disease (not leukaemia) and his body was not making while blood cells, or very good red cells either. The infection that had spread from his tooth to his throat was too much for his body to cope with and he passed away at 3:35 AM on Tuesday 13 November. I do, and will, miss him greatly.

• To add to the family dramas my mother in law is also ill with cancer. My wife and youngest son have gone over to Australia’s Gold Coast where she lives to be with her, probably until the end.

• I have started back into some gentle exercise. I lost 8kgs when I was sick, but it was mainly muscle, though some fat fell off. I have mostly recovered the weight but it is all around my waist… My fitness is well down on this period last year and with Christmas coming up I really do not expect to see major improvements until the new year, though I will try and be sensible.

• I started back at physio again last week, my ankle seized up again while I was sick and I have far less movement in it than 2 months ago. The physiotherapist is going to give it until the end of January before deciding on any long term options.

I have taken quite a few photos in tha past 12 months, well over 3,000, some of them I have even liked and kept. I was going to be part of a small local exhibition which was to have taken place last weekend but fortunately it was postponed while my father was sick, which was a great relief as I was starting to stress about it a bit.

I am now looking at my event options for 2008 and have to toss up between mountain biking and running again. I was going to dedicate 1 year to running, but have a bit of a bug and only managed to 6 months before injury and sickness prevented me from carrying on. I will decide in January when I have had a good idea of what my ankle is likely to do, but I have had this idea seeded in my mind.

http://www.keplerchallenge.co.nz/

Personally I think it is a stupid idea, but possibly a goal to strive for. I thought 42k on the road was long enough !

So this could be a new training log for 2008, or this could be the last post…

Cathay Pacific Half Marathon

2007-02-27T07:39:00.000+13:00

As I was unsure of the start times, number of runners and walkers and the process for registering the Cathay Pacific half marathon I was up at 5.00 AM for my usual pre-run breakfast of two slices of toast and an instant coffee. I was out the door by 5:30 and on site at the start line at Okahu Bay by 6.00, thirty minutes before the late registration office opened.

Once I had bought myself a coffee from an all night café and got my self registered it seemed I had been over cautious! But I did get a park by the finish line which was great as I could have ended up an easy kilometer away later on.

The event is informal with no results taken, plus the start time for the 2 hour half marathoners was officially 8.30 and I was not going to hang around for 2 hour. As it is such an informal event you can pretty much start when you like, so I watched a couple of runners go off with the walkers at the official event start time of 7.00 and elected to run at 7.30 which was what I was guessing would have been the start time for the runners anyway.

I had a good start, as always faster than I wanted, though I was felling good for the first 8Km’s and played tag with another couple of runners which kept the motivation going. I was running a few seconds faster than my planned pace and I think that did not server me well later on, though I was reasonably cautious. By local standards this is quite a hilly half and I was feeling good up the first few climbs taking advantage of the water stops with a brief walk while I drank the water down. The morning was quite warm even at that time of day and by the time we hit the waterfront again at Kohi I was soaked and suffering a bit from chafing. The last 4kms were tough, even though it was dead flat with a mild tail wind I struggled to finish. Normally I can put in a fast last kilometer but I just had nothing left for this one. The lack of sleep, the amount of training in the past week and the complete lack of carbo loading finally caught up with me in the run. I finished in 2:01 which is 1 minute out of my target time. I was disappointed yet happy with the time given the bad build up to the race.

There is one more half to do before the full and I hope to complete that run a lot quicker than this one.

There are some big training weeks coming up over the next month so diet and sleep are going to be essential, I am a bit concerned with the chaffing issue as well as I am using an ant-chafe cream.

Sunday afternoon I went out to a free concert in Huia, I saw Tahuna breaks and a bit of Ddub. Both reggae/blues style. It was a great show and I took a couple of shots.

Tahuna Breaks

Ddub

I Reloaded the MP3 player today with a broad mix of pop and a small smattering of punk and metal ready for the next long run. I plan to run home from work on Wednesday night, 17kms. It is going to be tough as I am not great straight after work.

Back into the training

2007-02-26T15:47:00.000+13:00

On Monday night youngest had a kayaking and BBQ evening with scouts out at Cornwallis Wharf. I decided to run out there from home after work as a penance for not training for a while and to kick my training back off again.

The run is only 15km but there are a couple of quite tasty climbs with a very steep climb in the middle to contend with. Naturally the evening was warm! One of the girls at work had recently leant me one of those running belt thingies with 4 small water bottles on it, so I filled a couple of those with tap water and left home. I struggled to begin with but soon got into a rhythm up Titirangi Rd and through Exhibition drive. I kept the pace right down due to the heat and my lack of running though I was soon sweating like mad, I kept up a low fluid intake from about 30 minutes of running and I do think that made a difference. I managed to jog all the way up the ‘hill’ which pleased me as it is damn steep and is 10km into a hilly run. The rest of the way is not too bad, one other climb which is easy compared to the ‘hill’ and the last two kms are pretty much down hill. The run took 1:40 which I was happy with considering my two weeks off and this was the hilliest run I have done and even better I was not utterly broken at the end.

I was looking forward to jumping in the sea for a cool down swim when I arrived but the tied was miles out and I did not fancy a 100 metres slog through the mud to get me knees wet, so a disappointing end to a decent run.

I have decided to go back there one evening, my car ! when the tide is high and take some photos

I had Tuesday off and did a quick 8km block run on Wednesday night, I started off slow and then picked the pace up through the middle, I was feeling the effects of Monday night and the heat by the end though. When I got home and checked the time I saw that I had posted one of, if not the, fastest times for the Godley/Portage/Astley/Taupo loops.

I took the camera to work on Friday as I had seen a bit of street 'theatre' I wanted to shoot on Wednesday and I was it was still there. It was and here it is, I also liked these jandals !

My next run was on Friday night, again it was warm, I think warmer than Monday and I left fairly soon after work for a 13km loop from home up through Titirangi and Exhibition drive again, but this time I turned round at the end and ran home. I managed a good pace up the hill to Titirangi and was feeling pretty strong at the top so decided to keep the pace going and see if I could do a good time. I felt good all the way though to end with a slower patch in the middle to ‘save myself’ for the finish. I have not checked thoroughly back through my records but my time of 1:09 was the fastest I have found. I was utterly soaked in sweat by the time I got home as well which was rather unpleasant !

After the run on Friday night Deana and I watched “Thank you for smoking” – what a great film, found it so funny, especially as I am an ex-smoker. The best movie I have seen for a while.

Saturday I was up early (but not as bad as Friday when I was up at 6.00 to take number 1 son to work) and on the road to Tauranga where the office was moving locations, at least 100 metres up the road. The day went well, bit of down time in the middle of the day when I should have fed better than 2 bits of cold pizza (in hindsight !). I had all tasks done and was out of there for the drive home at 8.00 PM and home by 10:30 which was good. As I was home early enough I decided I would do the Cathay Pacific Half Marathon the following day. Wish I had eaten better…..

The weekend

2007-02-19T10:33:00.001+13:00

With tapering for the first half marathon and then flying to Australia and spending 4 days lounging around eating and drinking and then coming home to 4 incredibly busy days I have not run for two weeks. This has really stuffed my training plan up completely. I seemed to have not gained much weight which is good, but I must have lost some of the fitness I was building. I hope to get out for a decent run tonight and back into a regular rhythm again this week. The two friends who were also planning on running the marathon have pulled out which is a real bummer as I was going to look to them as training partners once the KMs start to build over the next few weeks.

The weekend was really busy, I had planned on running on both days but it just did not happen. Saturday started with youngest’s softball match, straight to the supermarket on the way home, picked up my wife from the airport and then straight to a friends child’s 1 year birthday. Home from there to prepare food for a BBQ at our house with some friends to welcome my wife home after almost a month away.

Sunday morning I was up early and off to watch the senior and junior classes at the Auckland round of the National MTB XC champs at Riverhead, I could not stay for the pro-elite class sadly as I wanted to doing something with youngest. The racing was good, very warm and the people I knew who were racing did very well, two firsts and a second placing. After the racing I shot home and picked up youngest and a mate and took them snorkeling at Goat Island. The place was jam packed, I have never seen it so busy, the tide was way out as well so it was quite shallow. Plenty of marine life around though and the water was remarkably clear. The trip home was slow due to traffic so it was straight in and cooking dinner so that there was food on the table when my wife got home from work. Straight after dinner we were out for half an hour at a friend of our daughters 18th birthday BBQ. Home knackered….

Bought a Decendents CD on Friday – how the hell did I manage to miss them for so long… Been listening to a lot of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry as well lately, I am quite into that bass heavy post-punk/early goth sound at the moment.

Gold Coast trip

2007-02-19T10:02:00.000+13:00

It has been an interesting two weeks since the last post.

The first few days I did not do much that was post worthy, was really busy at work, did a couple of light training runs in preparation for the Pukekohe half marathon and didn't go out taking photos. Youngest did start his first year at high school, he seemed to enjoy it and is in a class with one of his good mates which is cool.

On the Friday morning I had the call from my wife that I had been waiting on, that my father in law had passed away peacefully in his sleep and the funeral was on Tuesday. I spent most of Friday arranging flights and places for youngest son to stay and booked myself a trip to the Gold Coast for Sunday morning returning on Wednesday night. Sunday was going to be my first half marathon of the season and a part of my training program, but as always, family comes first. The following Saturday was manic with youngest’s softball, shopping and work.

Sunday morning I was the airport at 7.00 AM for a not bad flight to Brisbane airport, I was met by my wife and brother in law who had just landed from a flight from Canberra. It was great to see my wife again after over 3 weeks. The next couple of days passed in a blur of shopping, lounging around, cleaning out the garage at my father in laws, getting utterly soaked by the rain and eating and drinking loads of wine. I took a few photos, but the weather was not kind, very heavy rain and I was juts not geared up to get myself and my camera gear too wet.

Rainy in Paradise

The funeral on the Tuesday passed with out a hitch and the wake was held at my mother in laws house, it was a small quiet affair. I took a few photos for one of my brother in laws who was on his way to Ecuador and un able to attend. The following day my wife and I were up around 4.45 AM and drove down to Surfers for a walk along the beach, a big breakie and a swim in the sea. The surf was crap sadly, but the walk and breakfast was great !

Soon after that I was back on the plane and flying back to New Zealand. My plane was delayed so I did not get home until after 2 AM and I was up at 7.30 the next day when youngest came home from his friends house for breakfast and to get ready for school.

Riverhead ride

2007-02-06T16:02:00.000+13:00

Today was Waitangi day in NZ, bizzarely we have a public holiday on a Tuesday, I am not complaining though.

Even though youngest only came back from two and half weeks in Australia on Sunday he was off today with a friends family to go snorkelling up at Goat Island. I decided to go ride at Riverhead with a bunch of other Vorbers.

The forecast was for rain but it was a reasonably sunny, though windy morning. The six of us in the group and we decided to ride the Roadside trail we cleared a couple of weekends ago and then do the BikeParks loop and Eagles Nest trails. I havent ridden BikeParks for ages and have never done Eagles Nest. For a change I took the AC, the idea being on the AC I would get to hills and just say stuff it and walk up them, thus saving myself for the hlaf marathon this coming Sunday. This will mean I have ridden all three bikes in the last 10 days which is excellent.

The Roadside trail was OK, I would have liked to have done it last as Iit always takes me a while to get into the rhythm for twisty downhill tracks, especially riding the AC after riding a hard tail for a while. The first section of the BP trail is quite fun, down hillish with a couple of sharp pinch climbs that catch you out, the trails were really dry in most places with a couple of small holes as always at Riverhead. I made it half way up the road climb before quitting, only one rider made it all the way up, all three times. Eagles nest is a cool little trail off to the side with a couple of small jumps and steeper sections, we rode it twice which meant we had to do the climb a few times. Worth it. We then rode the rest of the parks trail back to the car park. A fun little ride, good group to ride with, not too fast and not too slow.

These are some photos from one of the other riders, on the climb I am the blob half way up the hill.
Me appearing at the bottom of Eagles Nest.

After the ride I was going to join the two oldest kids at Groove in the Park, a three stage dance music concert at Western Springs. I got a park about 2k from the gate which was better than I expected. My plan was to sift around and take some photos of the some of the bands. After queuing to get in for about 30 minutes and barely moving and with time slowly disappearing and rain clouds appearing over the horizon I gave up and went home. The main act I wanted to see was on at 6.15 and I had to be at friends for dinner at 6.30 so it was not worth hassle.

On recommendation from some blog I read I am listening to some free tracks from the Dismemberment Plan's web site, they are really cool. While do I only hear of these bands a few years after they split ?

Piha trip

2007-02-05T15:17:00.000+13:00

After the ride on Saturday I expected a good sleep that night but it just didn’t happen, no real surprise there I guess.

On Sunday I was up earlyish and on the road ready to run by 7.30 it was another great day, no wind at all and warm but not too hot. I parked at Kohi again and ran back towards town. I kept to a slow pace again and was reasonably consistent all the way to the bottom of the hill into the domain. The domain climb was Ok, I didn’t really struggle though my calves were a bit tight on the way up. The run down was not too bad and the return to the car was a bit of a struggle, I faded a bit about the 12-13k mark, which used to be fairly common for me in the past but I have been pretty good with my runs so far this time. I did half perk up for the finish which was pleasing. I was pretty broken at the end though. I was expecting this after the ride yesterday, so I was not overly unhappy. The tide was in again so I had a refreshing dip before driving home. One week to the first half marathon, so I will drop a couple of the runs from the training plan this week and taper a bit.

In the afternoon I picked youngest son up from the airport as he has come back from Australia ready to start school on Thursday, it will be his first day at high school.

Today was another good day, youngest and I went out to Piha for a swim late morning and the surf was just PERFECT for body surfing, I must have caught 20 waves, it was magic. We stayed in the surf for about an hour and by then the tide had gone out to far for the break to remain even and sized enough for a good body run. May well go back tomorrow.

Listening to some old Stone Roses today, damn they were good.

I snapped this shot of some rubbish bins on the way.

Rotorua ride

2007-02-03T21:31:00.000+13:00

The great weather has continued through out the week though the wind has not yet dropped. El Nino summer means it probably will be windy for a while.

I had a good run after work on Thursday, did another 10ker along the waterfront, warm evening again and the wind had shifted so it was not so telling but it still had an impact in a couple of places.

After work last night I went up to One Tree Hill to take some pictures and try and get a decent sun set shot. It was horrendously windy there and the sun set was not too exciting so I went home for another quiet night in alone.

Today I was up early with the intention of remotely booting a server and then driving to Rotorua for a ride with a few Vorb guys. My plan was to leave 45 minutes earlier than I need to and take some photos of anything that caught my eye in the early morning sun on the way. Unfortunately the remote reboot didn’t work and I had to go into the office and physically restart the box. This pretty much screwed my photography plans ! Apart from a couple of bad patches I had a good ride down to Rotorua, I stopped to take a photo of this shack. I have been wanting to take photos of it for years as it has been decaying for a long time. I plan on snapping it every time I go down.

Had a great ride with 3 guys and a girl from Wellington and 1 from Tauranga. We rode the road to A trail and then Tickler and then ground and in my case walked to the top of Hot Cross Buns (HXB), I am struggling to climb on the DMR at the moment, the climb is averagely steep and has a spongy loose surface and I find it too hard to maintain traction on the SS. Easier to walk ! HXB is riding sweetly, it has been fairly cut up as they are now shuttling up there so there are a lot more riders going up now, I had a bit more fun as the rear brake pads are worn out, I hucked one small jump and almost went off the side of the track as I just about failed to slow enough to get round the following corner. The guys sessioned the jumps at the end of HXB for a while and I took a couple of photos.

After HXB we rode up to the Rollercoaster, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourites, through Chinese menu (Chop Suey, Spring Roll and Sweet and Sour) not bad trails though the Sour bit is a bit of a grind. These take you back to the top of Be Rude Not Too, which is a favorite, the trail is just so quick, fairly flowy with a couple of nice little drops to get some air under the tyres. Tauranga rider left us for the car park at the start of Diamonback. It is a toss up which is the better trail out of Diamondback and BRNT, though I bottomed by forks on an early drop and broke my speedo cable, third cable broken… I lost the rest of the guys while I tried to sort out so kinds sifty rode the rest of the trail, nailing it on the berm sections though as you just have to…

We stopped for lunch at Zippy’s Café which was damn good and then I made the two and half hour drive home happy and pretty tired.

18k run tomorrow morning !

Piha photo visit

2007-02-01T07:38:00.000+13:00

I had a good run on Tuesday night. I was thinking about running along the waterfront after work but there was a very strong westerly blowing so I decied to go home and run Exhibition drive as it is a bit more sheltered. I drove up to Titirangi and parked outside Lopdell House and ran up Kohu St to Exe drive and then abck around to Titirangi again. All up I guess it was closer to 9km than 8km, and it had a nice gentle hill to start. The training program really kick in from this weekend with an 18km run this Sunday and increasing over the next few weeks as well as an extra run per week. I am really going to have to manage those rest days.

Last night after work, mowing the lawn and cooking dinner I went out to Piha to take a few photos as the sun was settings. I took a whole bunch of shots on different settings and tonight I will sit down and work out what settings had the best effect for the light.

Here are the best two shots.

Todays Photo

2007-01-30T08:03:00.000+13:00

Yesterday was Auckland Anniversary day and a day off work, it was also a training rest day so I did not do any real exercise. On Sunday night the rain that had been forecast for the weekend finally arrived, around 30 minutes after I had watered the tomatoes... It rained again first thing yesterday morning but soon after the rain cleared we had another glorious day. I visited friends and then drove around Titirangi in the late afternoon snapping a few shots.

Here is my favourite from the day, it is the main door to Lopdell House in Titirangi village.

Parahaki ride

2007-01-28T21:52:00.000+13:00

I had another crappy sleep last night, slightly achy from the day, but it was so hot. At least I was up reasonably early and on the road on time for my drive up to Whangarei. The weather was again beautiful, though again the forecast was for cloudy and showers. As I was making good time I stopped for a coffee in Welsford and too take a couple of photos by the oil refinery at Marsden Point. Te photos were a waste of time but I did get some quite good shots at two ‘sail’ statue thingies outside of town.

Sail

I was meeting an old Vorb buddy, Geoff, at the information centre and snapped some graffiti while I waited. We had a short drive to the trails at Parahaki and I was really looking forward to riding there for the first time. The trails are mainly in a forested area of the park and are very exposed, so the clay surface is as hard as concrete. The riding was pretty good, mix of short XC and freeride trails, though we took most of it slowly as I was on a rest day and Geoff is recovering from an injury. We had a good ride and over two and half hours covered most of the trails in the park.

The Cindercone at Parahaki

Some of the trail network

Geoff on the final climb back to the car

I forgot to put sun tan lotion on and ended up getting a little bit burnt on the ride.

On the way back to Auckland I snapped a few more photos and stopped for a quick swim at Uretiti.

The drive was not too bad on the way home, until I hit the big hill north of Maharangi when the traffic just stopped, it too over an hour to cover the next 12 or so KM’s to the highway, it was very frustrating.

Earning some trail karma

2007-01-27T21:32:00.000+13:00

I had a good run this morning. I had another lousy nights sleep, one of the worst in a string of bad sleeps, but I felt Ok when I got up and was down at St Heliers ready to run 16 km around 8.00 AM. The first 8km went really well and I sat on an almost completely even 5:45 minutes per km. This will be my approximate marathon pace if I can sustain it and I was pleased that I was so consistent without really putting my effort into pace management. On the return 8km I managed to complete a fast km and a slow km all the way back. My return journey was again 4 minutes faster than the way out, very happy with the negative split again. All up I was running for 1:31 which was slightly faster than last week, which is again pleasing, though I did not stop for a drink and a wee like last week. The conditions were great, low humidity, no wind, though further towards town the temperature was showing as 24 degrees.

The tide was miles out this morning, I tried to get in for a swim, but after wading out 50 metres though sticky mud and only being knee deep I gave up and had cold shower on the beach.

I took the photo below from the end of the run, you cannot say that view is bad here.

After a quick feed and an hours ‘rest’ at home, I drove up to the Freeriden bike shop to go out with a few of the guys to do some trail clearing at Riverhead forest. 5 of us cleared the Roadside track which was getting quite overgrown with gorse and cutty grass. I appropriately wore jeans to a track clearing day on the hottest day of the summer. It was an uncomfortable few hours ! I got pretty dehydrated as well, I only took a single drink bottle and that was just not enough. Still it was pretty good to get earn some trail karma !

Hopefully I will sleep well after the running and trail work today, tomorrow I ride.

Here is a shot of the track entrance !

The Gorsenator in action

Some cleared trail.

The wedding.

2007-01-26T21:41:00.000+13:00

Riding buddy’s wedding was an enjoyable affair. The ceremony was in his(their) lounge and was attended by 12 people. The photography went OK, I was not overly impressed with many of the shots, but it was quite a tricky environment for a beginner. A narrow room with the ceremony taking place in front of glass doors to the outside. The light was not photography friendly. The best shots were at the reception when I got the couple outside for a bit. They are going to have a second, larger function later in the year when they have time to organise something. I will be able to get more photos then.

I did have a 2-3 glasses of wine as well, it could have turned into a session as the reception finished around the time most people knock of work for a friday drink, but I decided to just go home for a dull night in by myself.

Anyway it was cool to see them married and happy

The best shot I took of the day was this one below, I was looking at the back of the town house for possible shooting locations and spotted this reflection as I walked through the garage.

I got my laptop back

2007-01-25T22:07:00.000+13:00

The good news this week is I got my repaired laptop back before the long weekend and the even better news was they did not have to touch the hard drive so all my photos are cool. The plan for weekend is to burn the photos to DVD.

Even cooler is that I have tomorrow off as my biking buddy is getting married. It will be a small ceremony at his house followed by a lunch. I am snapping some shorts and will print and frame the best as as a gift, what else can you get two people who have most things ? With my wife away, wedding gift shopping was always going to be traumatic.

And to cap all the this off Monday is a public holiday in Auckland

I have set my self up a page on Flickr.com and will start to upoad some shots there over the weekend, once I am happy with how it works.

Had a scheduled 10k run tonight. I went straight after work and ran along the waterfront from the city end towards Mission Bay. It was not a bad run, very very warm and quite a strong westerly blowing, but I again started off slowly for the first 5km and then did 3 1k high HR runs on the way back to the car. I was extremely hot by the time I finished, but happy with my 57 minutes.

I broke my non-drinking rule and went to the grooms house to bless him with a wee scotch before heading home with my nicely rebuilt and cleaned laptop. I will have a few dribks tomorrow at the wedding, but I have a big weekend planned if the weather defies the bad forecasts, with a 166km run followed by track building on Saturday and a 3 hour drive to Whanagarei for a ride on Sunday. Monday is rest day !

I am reading "One train later" Andy Summers autobiography, it is OK, fairly interesting but he is a bit of a nob. Great guitarist though, so I am listening to a bit of The Police tonight.

Tonight I have been playing with the basic software that came with my camera. This is the best effort, I called if "Lifeguards in Space", though it has lost a bit of detail in the small format

Comet McNaught or not

2007-01-24T09:44:00.000+13:00

Ironically after all the drama with the car over the weekend, I had it booked in for a service and warrant of fitness check yesterday. Apart from the horn not working, which I knew about, everything else was fine and the car is back in my possession, freshly serviced and warranted.

As it was not too hot when I got home form work I decided to get out for my scheduled 8km run. I drove up to Titirangi and ran up past Mt Atkinson and then along Exhibition drive and back the normal way to Titirangi. The run is probably closer to 9km than 8, but it didn’t have as much hill as I guess it should have, but I was still feeling the effects of the Waharau ride a bit. The sun came back out half way along and it did get quite warm, mixed with the humidity it was a sweaty run. I kept to a slow pace to start and sped up for the return so my return time was again faster than the first leg. This is something I am going to be focusing on as well as keeping to a slow, low HR run, though again I did push it a bit on the way back to the car. I am going to really have to try and keep to low HR runs as I am feeling quite worn out again this morning and I have only barely started on building the training miles. I was considering a ride tonight but I think I will rest up instead.

After the run and a dinner of reheated leftovers from Sunday night (tonight I have reheated leftovers from Monday night) I decided to go out to Piha to try and get a photo of Comet McNaught which has been seen in the skies about 9.00 – 9.30 PM. There have been a few photos in the newspaper so I thought I would have a go and Piha was a recommended spot. I got about half way there, as far as the Anawhata Rd when I could see that there was heavy low cloud hanging over the edges of the ranges. At that point I decided to turn back and try the lookout at Arataki. I stopped and took a few photos of a tree in the fog, I have bracketed a range of speeds to see what works best. Here is the shot I like best.

I got to Arataki about 8.45 and there were half a dozen people there. I set up the camera and tripod in a likely spot and snapped a few sun set shots while I waited. Again I snapped a hole load with different manual settings to see what came out best, though I haven’t had a good chance to review in detail yet. Here is the best of those shots.

By 9.30 there would have been 100 people on the lookout and sadly I was in the wrong spot to see the comet. I moved down towards the car park where it could be seen, but there was too much wind and too many cars to be able to take a long photo. I did get to see the comet and it was all very unexciting. I went home.

There are some shots of the comet here

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=000568BF-464C-15B3-81A783027AF1010F

I had an email from my wife, youngest is coming home on the 4th of Feb, though it sounds like her father might not make it that far so I could be over sooner rather than later.

A day working from home

2007-01-22T21:15:00.000+13:00

Due to stolen house keys and the damage to the car I decided to work from home today. Luckily I have employers who support this to some degree so there was no real dramas, but I was missing a few things I needed to really be effective. Luckily the good news is I get my lappie back on Wednesday and nothing lost. I am so pleased, not having music at work was killing me !

The locksmith came fairly early in the day, and it only cost me $135 to get the barrell changed and 6 new keys cut. It was less than I expected to pay but of course more than I wanted to.

The car window was not in stock so I could not take the car to the window place until 4.00 which was a pain. It was also too far from the mall or anything interesting so I wandered up to the supermarket and went for a 40 minute walk to kill the hour and a bit it took them to replace the window and clean the car. At least insurance covered it all which was cool.

I really didnt want to do that much exercise today as it was supposed to be a rest day, but I did walk real slow :)

Youngest son might be coming back from Australia this week, not yet decided but he could be here on Thursday. He is away at a Christian rock festival with a school friend all weekend if he is back, but I am not sure what I will do next week when he is off school and I am at work. I would take some time off work but my one and only staff member is off for the whole of Feb. He is old enough to leave for a few hours, but I am not having multiple 13 year olds running around unsupervised for a whole day.

I have discovered that my scales are completely nuts unless I lost 1.4 kgs while having a shower today. I knew they went up and down over a day or so, but assumed that was related to sweat loss and how much I ate or drank during the day. May have to invest in another set. Though weight watching is largely irrelevant. I can see I need to lose some fat, it is just hanging there ! Though I would like to be well under 80kgs before the marathon, which will be easy as I am only slightly over.

It was so nice to be able to listen to the radio all day, such a relief from the relative silence of the office.

3 weeks to the first half marathon and 14 till the marathon...

Photo update from yesterdays ride

2007-01-22T09:01:00.000+13:00

I know I could have edited the last post, but I am not expect at mucking around with photos in the blog so decided to add seperately.

Here is a photo of me and the Cindercone from the ride yesterday.

and I still didnt sleep well last night.

Waharau Ride

2007-01-21T21:49:00.000+13:00

Today was almost a great day.

I had another crappy sleep last night, so the 16km run, plus early dinner, plus reduced caffeine and a warm bath did not help at all. Perhaps today after a good ride my fortunes may change ? though it is quite humid tonight. Something has to work eventually.

Up early as I was awake, light breakfast of coffee and toast and in the car and off to Waharau, which is about an hour and quarter drive from home on the Firth of Thames. Wharau is part of the Auckland Regional Council park network and one of the few that we are allowed to ride in, and one of two that has tracks worth riding. The loop is short at slightly over 18kms, including 4 km of flat water front road, around a 450m climb over 9km, some lovely twisty ridge line single track in native bush and ending in a wicked double track decent back to the car park. I am sure the whippets could do the circuit quite quickly but for us mortals it is usually a 3 and half hour trip, with time for the slower riders to catch up, mechanicals, view admiring, photos and eating all to be catered for. This is the third year we have had a Vorb ride here, though this year we only had 6 riders down from the 20 or so last year.

Remarkably for a vorb ride we only left 20 minutes late, with a brisk ride along the road to the start of the farm track. There was a howling head and cross wind on the road and I seemed to lead the whole way – teach me for riding the hard tail I guess. Fortunately the hill we were climbing sheltered us from the wind as a long climb into a head wind would have been pretty tough. The track is a semi-overgrown four wheel drive/farm track and is fairly exposed.

The first third of the climb is not too bad, easily rideable for someone like me, the further up the trail the steeper and sketchier the track became with a couple of sections too steep for me to ride and a couple more that no one rode. It took us 2 and half hours to get to the top with numerous stops along the way.

After a quick refuel we lept into some nice twisty tightish single track. Sadly the council have graveled the track in the last year so it was not quite so much fun, and I particular hate riding down loose gravel trails, still it was a hell of a lot fun. There was a lot of vine and fern across the track so parts were fairly jungle. At one point I got ahead to get a couple of single track photos and picked a spot with a nice low hanging vine just to add to the action.

After the ridge line trail we climbed a bit more four wheel drive track before starting the descent back to the carpark. The first couple of km’s are just the most fun, not overly tight, but twisty with lots of short climbs and descents on a nice firm beech leaf littered mud surface, on one short section I clocked 47kmh. The rest of the decent is a bit more open on a narrow four wheel drive track. The whole track is shared with walkers so we were always cautious on the way down, fortunately the only walkers we saw were at a a viewing platform and a trail intersection. The decent takes about 20 minutes and pops you are out right in the car park.

The ride was great. Sadly some scum sucking low down dirty mofo had broken into my car while we out. They smashed the back right side window with such force they put a small dent in the roof of the car. Luckily out of the 5 cars there mine was the only broken into. Even more luckily the morons had missed the $700 zoom lens sitting wrapped in a t-shirt in my riding bag and I had phone and wallet on me. They obviously had no taste in music either as they had been through my CDs and left them all behind… The only thing they took were my house keys, which is a real pain as I will now have to change the damn locks. My car insurance will cover the window but not the locks. I will work from home tomorrow and get the jobs done. Damn shame to ruin a good ride.

The normal after ride is to go to the Kaiui (sp) fish and chip shop for fish, chips and beer. We arrived along with about 20 members of the Mazda MX5 club. The service is slow enough at the best of times so we flagged it and went home. The fish and chips are damn good which is why it is so popular…

I am hoping for a good sleep tonight !

Damn laptop.

2007-01-20T17:55:00.000+13:00

Well I have worked in IT for 18 years now and do I listen to my own crap? obviously not! On Wednesday night my laptop died, totally and utterly dead. It is kinda pointing towards a power related failure rather than hard drive, which is good as I had quite a bit of stuff on my hard drive, all my new photos, and a whole bunch of music files. Sadly most of my work related stuff had been back up fairly recently and I had been working files off the server. My training log will be the worse loss as I haven’t copied that over to my data stick for weeks. I also had a half written post from Wednesday to upload as well.

I am working on some POS spare laptop from work, that has a dodgy network connection and the damn wireless seems not like my home wireless set up very much which sucks.

Tuesday night my wife went walking with a friend so I get a ride to the friends house and indirectly ran home from there. The run went up Konini Drive, Scenic Drive to Shaw Rd, along Exhibition Drive to the end then back along the full length of Exe. Through Titirangi and home. I was planning on an 8km ride but it ended up being closer to 10. I kept a nice rhythm on the climb up Konini Drive and the put the pace down on the return leg of Exe and then cruised home. It was not a bad run, very warm again though.

Wednesday I left work early to take my wife and youngest to the airport as they are off to the Gold Coast for a week or four. My father-in-law has terminal cancer and has been given four weeks so my wife has gone over to see him with youngest, leaving me and number one son at home. They have not fixed any time for coming back yet so I will be fending for myself for a while I guess, though youngest starts high school on 7 Feb so her will have to be home by then. I will go over to the Gold coast for the funeral, though that may well depend on when I guess.

After dropping them for their flight I got home in time to pack up the Cindercone and head up to Woodhill for a ride. My early riding buddy was late so I shot out for a quick trip up Powerball, half of Big Mama, down the side of Cookie, down Race face and back to the car park. Early riding buddy was late enough that we only had 30 minutes before the other two riders were coming so we shot up Powerball again and did the first half of Spaghetti and down the road to the top of Raceface and back to the carpark to meet the other two who arrived on time at 7. For me it was back up Powerball for the third time in the evening, each time I was riding more smoothly and getting the gear changes in the right place. It is strange riding a geared hardtail again after 9 months of mostly single speeding. I think I was slower on the climbs than I would have been on the single, as I did try and spin up them rather than standing and hammering away. This was supposed to be a gentle cross training spin ride, but as usual with the guys I was with we got a bit carried away at times and go a bit of pace going. We had a newish guy with us and I kinda forgot about him as we thundered through stage two of Big Mama before realizing we had lost him completely. Fortunately he took a short cut and met us at the end. I do have to realise that not everyone can ride at the same pace as me - please note – I am not that fast….

We then had a quick run down SPCA, I have never ridden this trail on a geared hardtail before, so was interested to see ho fast I could go, I was slower than expected on the AC but I was sure I would get a quick run on the Cindercone, sadly there was a bit of traffic and I got stuck behind slower guys twice, they both kindly gave way and let me pass, but it would have been nice to flow the entire trail. Next time maybe. On the climb out I snapped my chain, I then remembered that I had snapped the chain on its last ride in April last year. My new chain tool was a piece of crap and I couldn’t remove a link with it (now replaced) but one of the guys had one so I was back on the bike for the ride up Link. A ferocious pace was set by our single speeder and in the end I gave up trying to keep up, this was supposed to be a relaxing cross training ride. Just before the top of Link the chain snapped again so I gave up after that. The boys short cutted Cookie and did Race face down and I rolled and pushed he road back to the car. A great ride. I hung round for a chat with some of the other riders for a while and then went home for a lonely meal of left overs as Number 1 son had eaten at his GF’s house.

Thursday was a stunning day, after work and a few house hold chores I headed out for a scheduled 10km run. I got about half way round and I really started to suffer with the heat and with the after affects of last nights ride. I took a short cut and ended up doing a very slow 8km or so. It took quite a while to cool down.

Friday was a rest day – yay….had two good feeds of rice, egg fried rice for lunch at Number 1 BBQ restaurant with the boys from work and a nice chicken korma for dinner courtesy of my riding buddy. Carbo loading for the run on Saturday.

Saturday was a perfect day for running, light cloud, not hot and little wind. I was up at 7.15 and drove to the waterfront after a light breakfast. Todays run was a slow 16km and I was a bit nervous after the bad run on Thursday night. I took 50 minutes to cover slightly over the first 8km, close to six minute KM’s which is my target for the marathon. I kept my HR under 140 for the whole way which was pleasing. On the return 8km I planned on a fast km followed by a slow. I got two reps in before needing to stop for a pee, my HR took a while to get back to normal so I did a 2km slow rep then finished with a fast – HR of around 170 KM a slow and a fast. The return took four minutes less at 46 minutes which I was really pleased with. It was a good run. I finished off with fifteen minutes in the sea to cool down, it was very nice and 8 hours later I am not really feeling much muscle soreness even though I have hardly sat down all day.

After I got home and got the housework done, I purchased a new chain, and replaced the chain tool with a better one and got the Cindercone back up and running for the Vorb ride at Waharau tomorrow. I am really looking forward to that ride and am hoping the weather is going to stay reasonable.

I amstill not sleeping that well, which is really annoying me, hopefully with clean sheets a long run, not much coffee, an early dinner and a bath tonight I can break the cycle.

I really hope I can get my laptop back from the shop early next week. I cannot seem to get the wireless working on this one, I am going to have move the network gear into the lounge so I can surf the net while watching Starship Troopers tonight.

Rock on.

An afternoon at the beach.

2007-01-14T21:12:00.000+13:00

Well as always the weather has confounded us ! the forecast was for a showery humid day with winds dying in the late afternoon. The morning was humid and mildly overcast but by lunch time the clouds and wind had gone and the day turned into a stunner. I managed to convince the youngest to drag his sorry ass of out bed at 12:30 and try and hunt down a mate to take to the beach for the afternoon.

We were on the road by 1.00 and after a slow trip out towards Piha we decided to drop down to KareKare beach instead. It was a wise choice, the beach was reasonably empty and the surf was small and even and great for body and boogie boarding. I had a great dip and left in the boys in the surf while I watched from the sidelines and snapped a few photos.

When the boys were done swimming I walked up to a derelict old stone hut on the beach to snap a few more shots. In the end I took about 35 shots today, I was happish with 3. I do love digital cameras !!! My plan for next weekend is just to sit down outside and play with the camera taking the same shot with a variety of different settings to see the effect they all have.

The boys doing what boys do best

The old beach house

Graffiti

The Cindercone

2007-01-14T11:12:00.000+13:00

Since the beginning of the year I have been really struggling with my sleep, and am feeling quite tired all the time. Physically I do not feel too bad, but mentally I am not the best. I will drop my coffee intake back to one a day again and see if that makes a difference, though my expectations that this will work are not high. After a week of reduced coffee I will go and see a naturopath and try and get some herbal sleep assistance. With all the training I am about to undertake I really do need get some decent sleep in.

Got up at 7.00 this morning and went out for another slow 10k run. I found the run quite tough, it was so humid I was drenched in sweat before half way, though it was not particularily warm. I planned on bounding up the hills again but just didnt have it in me in the end, but for a slow run it was not a bad time.

I had been planning on doing some road miles on the Cindercone and had road tyres on for that reason. I think this was rather a forlorn dream given the amount of running I have to do, though cross training is never a bad idea. Given that I am considering the Waharau ride next weekend, and there was no way my legs would be in any condition to push the SS up that hill I put some dirt tyres back on the Cindercone this morning. I hope to take to the forest Wednesday night after dropping my wife and youngest off at the airport. I havent ridden a geared hardtail for almost a year so it will be interesting to say the least.

Here she is in all her glory, tyred up and ready to go.

The first shot I am happy with

2007-01-13T20:39:00.000+13:00

The bad weather continued into the evening and with no plans and Star Wars Episode II on TV entertaining the youngest I started playing with my new camera, checking out some of the functions. Though I have now taken 215 shots - I love digital ! There are only 1 or 2 I actually like. The Youngest has snapped a fair few of the 212 as well, I am happy for him to use the camera as long as he is careful.

Here is my favourite, when I get Photoshop I will clean the flash reflection dots from his eyes.

Running is boring

2007-01-13T17:10:00.000+13:00

OK, running is a little bit boring, but not too bad, writing about going for a run is boring however, and I expect reading about someone who has been on a meaningless 5k run is more boring than writing about it. But that is what my life is going to be for the next 3 months as I train for this first marathon.

I could write about work but, man, that is even worse. Photography hasnt really started for me yet, though I hope to get some in this weekend. I have a few projects I am going to focus on - graffiti, bands, blue skies, punk/metal/goth people and imagery, but I will snap anything that is of interest.

Anyway back to the running.

As we were childless after work on Thursday my wife and I decided to go for a run along the waterfront, and she would have a go at 5 kms. We drove back into the city and out to the end of St Heliers beach, at the start of the marked 10 km run. It was quite windy and very humid though it wasn’t raining at least. We took a very slow jog from St Heliers to the traffic lights in Mission Bay and back again, Deana stopped about 100 metres from the end but I made her carry on so she achieved her goal. It was her longest run in many many years and a good achievement.

It was good for me to run slowly, I need to learn how to do this for the longer runs that are coming up soon.

This weekend I have two 10k runs scheduled, the forecast is awful for the whole weekend with strong winds, rain and high humidity set for the next three or four days. I was hoping to get and do something fun with the youngest over the weekend as he will be away for the next couple at least.

As the weather was so pants I got up late and had coffee and toast before heading out for a slow 10km at 8.30. My aim was to take my time and keep the pace down to a bare minimum but pick up the pace for the small climbs scattered along the course. I ran down Godley Rd, up past Craigavon park to Blockhouse Bay, along BHB Rd to Wolverton Rd, back down Portage and up Godley. It took 1 hour 5 and I am guessing it was between 10 and 11k, though I am not overly concerned about time on the slow runs. Tomorrow I am doing a faster 10k and will stick to the tried and true Titirangi Rd loop.

The damn MP3 playing mobile phone had a flat battery this morning, that just sucks, I do like to run to loud music, I have charged it up again for the run tomorrow but I think the battery is screwed. I am going to have buy myself a proper MP3 player I guess.

Having a play with the camera today, Hope to get out to Whatipu or one of the wild west coast beaches tomorrow to get some ‘stormy’ weather photos.

On Friday I finally managed to get a copy of the new Mint Chicks CD “Crazy Yes, Dumb No”. It was voted in numerous productions as one of the albums of 2006 so naturally it sold out, though I expecting it will sit un-played in a few collections. I have only had 1 listen and it is not as loud and fun as the first album “f**k the golden youth, but not too bad at all.

In celebration of listening to loud fast guitar pop (and I try to only listen to vinyl in the house as I cannot play it in the car !) I am listening a couple of early Soup Dragons EP’s. They are very Buzzcocksy, but with their own twist, they are such good EP’s, as is often the case the LP and everything since was crap.

Hog run

2007-01-11T07:44:00.000+13:00

The first Loaded Hog run of 2007 took place on Tuesday night, I had brought my running gear into work on the off chance my wife would join me in town for a quick run along the waterfront after work. The weather was vile, windy and wet, so it was no surprise when she did not come in. I was on my way home when one of the guys asked if I was running as he was going to attend, so I made my way to the car to get my gear instead.

As I headed out from the hog for a 5 minute warm up the heavens opened up and it poured down, it was not the most inspiring warm up ever ! The actual race was run with only a small amount of drizzle but the wind was quite strong. The pace was lightening fast and as usual I went out to quickly and was being passed by loads of people by the first kilometre as I started to drop back to the correct pace. I thought I was struggling by the time we hit the half way turn around point but my watch said slightly over 10 minutes which is pretty quick for me. The second half was harder but I kept to a reasonable pace and finished in 22:18 which I was pretty happy with, considering I had run 21k 2 days before. Sadly my work mate beat me !

My father in law has been slowly dying from gall bladder cancer for a while now and we got the message last night that he has 4 weeks left to go. My wife and youngest son are going to head over to Australia next week for a while and spend some time with him. I will head over later for the funeral I guess. Not the best news, but it is good to finally get some closure I guess.

My wife is 11 days into non-smoking and has started some slow jogging. When I got home from work tonight we went out for a slow jog along Exhibition drive. My program has me doing a slow 5 km so we started on that to see how she would go, in the end she turned around at the 2 km mark, but that is a pretty good effort some one who hasn’t run for a while. I cruised on and finished a 5kmer. It was quite humid and warm, but at least it was not raining and windy.

I sat down to load a marathon training schedule into Excel last night. It is quite scary how many klicks I have to run to be ready, I look at this schedule and find it hard to believe I will be able to do it. Slow and steady will be the way to go, I am doing lots of reading on training and rest and diet to keep me motivated and I have 3 half marathons along the way. I just hope my right knee holds out !

I think I will be dropping all riding for the next 3 and half months, the Colville race is out, I cannot train and compete in both events I am just not anywhere near fit enough. Though with wife and youngest in Aussie next weekend I might squeeze in a 21km run on Saturday and do the Vorb Waharau ride on Sunday, slow and easy ride (push up the hills) though. I should get the bike ready this weekend in case.

2007 - the year so far.

2007-01-08T15:30:00.000+13:00

Welcome to 2007.

The year so far has been OK. I did not take holiday time from work so have attended the office a few times. I have actually been busier than anticipated so did not get through much of the work I planned. But that is not entirely unusual.

As is tradition in New Zealand the weather over Christmas/new Year is arse, this year was no exception though it was less arse than it could be. On New Years Day we went up to Army Bay to go snorkelling as youngest son (13 years old) has a real bug for it now and Goat Island is too far to go to all the time. The weather was not the best and there was a bit of chop at Army Bay, we could see OK but there was just nothing to see which was a shame. We swam around for 30 minutes before youngest started to get cold – and he has a wet suit as well !. Once we got out of the water and changed it rained really heavily. We went home soon after that !

The following day we took youngest son and his mate down to the Karangaheke gorge, about an hour and a half drive south east of Auckland. The day was much nicer than New Years day and we had a pretty good drive there. The walk is quite nice, includes an old train tunnel that is over a km long plus numerous caves to explore. I took a lot of photos on the new camera but deleted most in the end. The camera is so different to my old SLR from 20 or so years ago, it is going to take me a while to work out all the functions.

I worked the next 3 days.

Last Saturday we went back up to Goat Island for another snorkel, though the sun never really came through the cloud so it stayed quite cool and the water lacked the clarity from two weeks ago. Had a fun snorkel around and came home early.

Sunday I was up at six and down to the waterfront for a 21 km run. The weather was almost perfect for running, light cloud and sunny patches, not too cold, though there was a reasonable breeze that moved around a bit. I parked at the St Heliers and ran from the changing rooms to The Strand, up through the domain, down St Stephens and Gladstone Rds back the The Strand and back along the waterfront to the car. The run went Ok, slower than I would have liked at exactly 2 hours, but I have not run that distance for well over a year and when I did run it I never ran routes with a hill like the domain… The main thing was I did not feel too bad, though I could not have run too much further. After the run I jumped into the sea for a cool down walk and dip before driving home.

For the last four weeks I have been, mostly, following quite a rigorous half marathon training program. I have not seen a program that has you running the distance twice before the event; normally you only ever do most of the distance prior to the big day. I quite like this new program ! In the next week or so I will start to check out the full marathon program as I am going to find that one tough.

My wife finished her degree at the end of last year and is now looking for a job, once she has settled into something I will review my own employment plans.

That’s about if for the start of the year, I have listened to some good music, read a couple of good books, seen some good movies, so all in all considering it has only been 8 days, 2007 has been good. I have some good things lined up, with a Marathon as my key physical goal and getting my photography going again to get my creative side working, rock on 2007. I even plan to ride the bike as much as I can without breaking the training program.

Bought the new Slayer CD as it was only $15, it is not too bad, certainly better than some of the other works. I have been after the last Mint Chicks CD but it was voted CD of the year for 2006 and has been out of stock ever since…

Oh yeah - I am back drinking coffee, though I have managed to keep it to 3 cups a day and only one ‘real’ coffee. The coffee reduction didn’t help my lack of sleep, today I am so tired…

2006 closed.

2007-01-08T14:19:00.000+13:00

My general slackness has continued through the festive season and into the new year, though I have been picking up the training for the half marathons that are coming up in February.

I have just read back to the last post and I had missed a fair bit out of that, so lets do a brief summary of the end of 2006.

To celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary on the last week of November my wife and I went to Queensland for a holiday without the kids. The youngest stayed with my sister and the older two stayed at home by themselves. This was a big trust thing for us and we were pretty pleased with how it all worked out. The holiday itself was good, 4 days on the Gold Coast with the In-laws was OK and then we went up to Cairns for another few days which was great. We did a snorkel/dive on the barrier reef which was expensive but just amazing, drove up to the Daintree and around the tablelands for a couple of days. It was a great trip, no stress for 4 days, one of the better holidays I have had, and would have deserved a decent post.

Our daughter moved out for her first taste of flatting the week we got back from our holiday, it is strange not having her in the house. Though we have made her bedroom the computer room, which probably means less internet time for me as I usually surf while watching TV.

Had family Christmas day a week early this year as my parents were away for Christmas day in the south island with one of my sisters and my other sister was with the in-laws in Tauranga. Had a pretty good family afternoon, all the “kids” behaved themselves.

On the last day of normal work we packed it in early and had a few wines with lunch, I then went down to my old employers for a few drinks and ended up in the pub for a few more. Somewhere along the line things got beyond blurry and I have no recollection of anything at all happening between 6ish and 10ish. My memory kicks back in again around 10 and by this time I was at the Kings Arms tavern to see the Mint Chicks play. The support act Shaky hands were really good as well but the Mint Chicks, sans their recently departed vocalist kicked arse. I spent the whole set leaping up and down like, and with, the teenagers. My daughter was there as well and she gave me a lift home which was pretty cool.

The next day I vowed to stop drinking after new years eve, though I do not drink much or often, when I do I have a drink I seem to have blank spots in the night, this I have concluded is not a good thing !

Christmas was OK, we had a friend with us for the day and went visiting other friends for the afternoon, the weather was OK, had a few drinks and ate too much. I am not a big Christmas fan so it was all a bit ho-hum. Did get some good books though !

On Boxing Day we took the youngest up to Goat Island and went snorkelling, he has been wanting to do this for a while and the weather and tides were right. Had a great time, though the water is far from warm yet. Goat Island has been a marine reserve for many many years so there was a ton of fish and things to see. Youngest son had a blast.

I was meant to work through the non-stat holiday days, but the first day back at work was so supposed to be the only dry day for a few days I took the day off and a few of went down to Rotorua for the day to ride. Had a great ride, I took the SS and never regretted it, even though I did have to push up the hill to the top of a new trail called Billy T that is the highest point in the forest. The ride back down was grin inducing. As always we had a blast on the BRNT and Diamondback trails. Great riding was had by all…

Had two days back at work and didn’t really do much, surfed the net and fixed a few things, I should have been blogging then !

A while ago I decided that if I got a decent bonus this year I would buy myself a good camera, I spent a large portion of my two work days researching cameras and seeking opinions on them from friends. An old friend of ours who we haven’t seen for years even though they only live less than 2kms away is heavily into photography so I gave her a call and we went down to visit and talk cameras. It was really nice to catch up and decided then to get a Canon 400d twin lens pack as it was on special for $1800. I bought it the next day…

New years eve was quiet, went to a friend of Deana’s for dinner then to another friends for drinks and downtown to watch the fire works.

Finished drinking until at least April 28th when the Marathon is on.

Catch up 1

2007-01-08T10:53:00.000+13:00

Wrote this in Word on December 15 and hvane posted it yet.

As well as spending 10 days away from computers on holiday I have continued to suffer my motivational crisis. I really cannot be bothered doing lots of things and keeping this record up to date has been one of those things. When I look at my last post from almost a month ago if suggest the same thing. So it is time to kick start the festive season and my event plan for 2007 with a blog update and good intentions to keep it up to date again.

Biking

Over the past month I or so I have done very little riding, I rode Wednesday night at Woodhill for the first time in ages. I took the AC for its maiden Woodhill voyage under my guidance. Found it tricky at first as I am used to riding the trails on the single speed, it took me a good hour to relax into riding a fully suspended bike, though at the end I was still grinding up climbs in the wrong gear. Riding down SPCA was so different, I had the seat too low, was always in the wrong gear and was bouncing around all over the place, I found there is a real difference in body positioning and balance between riding a hard tail and a fully suspended bike, I intend on riding the fully more over the next few weeks as I my ‘training plan’ is going to be based around road miles and 1 fun ride mid-week.

Last weekend I attended the final round of the Auckland MTB champs at Riverhead forest. Apart from an ill-fated run down to the bike shop the previous day I had not been on the bike for almost 5 weeks, so ‘racing’ at Riverhead was a bad idea. The day was good and there had not been too much rain in the preceding days so the course was remarkably dry, though Riverhead bogs never go away, its just the size that varies. I found the race to be incredibly tough, it was the first event I have ever competed in that I did not enjoy, not helped either by my first off road flat tyre…. The course was really not designed for single speeders, let alone unfit single speeders who have not been on their bike for 4 – 5 weeks. 9 started, 7 finished and I came last of the finishers, plus I only completed 2 of the 3 laps. I was not the only 1 who competed who did not finish though, there were a lot of drop outs in the geared classes as well. When I got home I found I had another flat tyre, which including the flat I had when I rode to the shops the previous day, means 3 flats in 2 days. I suspect something is up with my rim. One day I will take the tyre off and have a look, lethargy has prevented that happening so far…

Running.

I have semi-committed to doing the Rotorua marathon on April 28th so my focus over summer will be on getting my running miles up. I have also semi-committed to do the 70k Colville connection MTB race on 10 March so I need to develop a training plan till then that will get me some base miles on the bike up as well. Colville is 90% gravel road so road riding will be the go for training.

This weekend I aim to get together a decent training plan that will allow me to increase mileage on both bike and foot until Colville at least has passed. I am not really concerning myself with Colville too much, but I do have a time (and friends) to beat !

The last week.

2006-11-19T15:53:00.000+13:00

Another caffeine free passed reasonably successfully. I am still not sleeping managing to get a full nights sleep though which is very concerning, I do not think I am stressed with anything but I maybe I am ? I am going to not worry about avoiding coffee when I am in Australia next week, but I plan to keep off it at work any way. I guess the next thing to give up is alcohol but I don’t really drink that much or that regularly to believe it has any impact on my daily life.

Tai Chi was good again, we learnt a few more steps in the process, I started off the week getting up at 6.30 and doing 10 minutes each morning but got slack as the week progressed, will have another go this week at early rises.
After Tai Chi I went down to the school sports field and after a 10 minute warm up did a few sprint runs. I aim to do some sprints once a week to augment the slower runs I am supposed to be doing but aren’t. If I am planning on doing this marathon next year I am going to have the ramp the running up a lot over the next few weeks.

Tuesday night was another great little Murawai ride, it was just the 2 of us this week. I really struggled on the climb up the first hill to the forest entrance, all muscles hurt and breathing was a struggle. I do not why I am struggling with my running and riding at the moment, I have been fairly consistent with the amount I am doing and my diet has been pretty reasonable lately. Maybe I need a holiday from exercise as well ? We rode down Wild Thing and a bit of the Dak Track and then out the back and up the forest road to the quarry. There was quite a strong northerly blowing so riding up the road was quite hard work and I was pretty knackered by the time we got to the quarry. The quarry was an interesting place to ride, not a big area but lots of little challenges to play on, I had never been there before. I was worn out and riding like a real muppet so didn’t do try anything silly as it was just going to end badly, but I would like to go back there again. We left the quarry and continued north looking for trails made by the motor crosses that were rideable, we fond one great run that was no too chewed up and powered along there for a while before climbing over the fence and riding back down the road, with a nice tail wind back to the start. It was a good ride as it was a new set of trails and we saw deer, quail and rabbits, but I was very awkward on the bike for some reason.

I didn’t do much with the rest of the week, too lazy to get out and run, though I had good intentions !

On Saturday morning I did arrange to go riding with Miles and even got as far as driving all the way to the forest but the weather was awful and I waited in the rain for 10 minutes for the guys to turn up and it was cold and miserable so I packed the bike back in the car and piked. I think this must be my first pike ever from a ride. Normally the weather does not bother me at all. On the way home I dropped in at a new bike store in Henderson where I know the mechanic and had the disk brake fitted to my new wheel.

That night I cooked an OK butter chicken for dinner and had a couple of wines with Miles and the wife.

Sunday number 2 son went out to play softball with mates so I went out for a run. Drove up to Titirangi and ran from there to Exhibition drive, did 2 circuits and back to the car. One hour 27 minutes, 7 minutes faster than 2 weeks ago. I felt good, though again I had quite a sore arch. When I am in Australia next week I will look for a pair of Nike Pegasus from the Nike discounter shop, I have never had an issue with those shoes.

After the run I fitted a road tyre to the new wheel and now have the Cindercone going in road mode again. I now have 3 bikes that mostly work, though none of them are in perfect condition.

Been listening to a lot of Jawbreaker lately, loving that CD, but this afternoon has been Fields of the Nephilim on the stereo – loving the goth.

I must get back to updating more regularily. Roll on my holiday 1 week to go.

The last week wrapped up

2006-11-12T17:54:00.000+13:00

Tai Chi was good on Monday night, learnt another step in the process of whatever it is we are learning, along with some more stretches, I was still feeling a bit crap when I got there though the appalling head ache I had been suffering during the day had abated a bit.

When I got home my wife and I were discussing what to do for our 20th wedding anniversary at the end of the month and rather on the spur of the moment have decided to go to the Gold Coast for 4 days and visit her family and then take 4 days up in Cairns. We booked the flights that night ! this will be the first time we have been away for more than a night without the kids for 12 years. My sister will take the youngest and the big 2 can stay at home by them selves. We are placing a lot of trust on the two teenagers to not have parties while we are away. I am not so worried about my kids but I do not have a lot of faith in some of their friend.

Tuesday I booked my leave from work.

Wednesday I bought two CD’s Jawbreaker – Dear You and Ride – Smile. Both old CD’s and both are great. First Jawbreaker I have bought and I really do like it, will be hunting down some of their CD’s now. The Ride CD is a compilation of their first two EP’s, it is also very good. 2 good music purchases in one day, awesome.

On Friday night I decided to stay for a couple of drinks after work and not unusually I ended up getting completely toasted by 9.00 PM. Had a couple of wines or 3 with a couple of the finance people at a pub down the road from work. Miles collected me about 8.30 and we went off to a Japanese place for food which I really did not feel like. It is times like these that you really appreciate BK ! My wonderful daughter came and picked me up and between us we located the party number 1 son was at and drove home.

The next day I was up at 7.30 for number 2 sons softball game, I felt like crap and spent the 30 minute game warm up slumped in the car. The game was Ok, they were winning up until the last innings when they got slaughtered… still the boys enjoyed the game and number 2 got player of the day for a fine hit. I also succumbed to a very week instant coffee to perk myself up, it was so week I certainly did not notice any caffeine hit.

After the game and lunch, number 2 son disappeared with mates for the afternoon, my wife disappeared to see some friends, so I rode the AC in to town to pick up my car. It was a real struggle, I wasn’t in prime form, and a heavy fully suspended bike with 2.3’’ tyres is no road machine, though I did have a new seat post…

Sunday morning I was awake very early, it was a gorgeous day so I was up at 6.30 AM and drove into town for a run along the waterfront. I parked at Okahu Bay and ran east along the waterfront and up the hill at the end of St Heliers, then back to the car. I felt pretty good during the run but the arch of my left foot was really tender by the time I got to the car. The intention was to run for an hour and a half and I believe if it wasn’t for the foot I could have easily have done that. I am now experimenting with some arch supports.

My daughter has decided to go flatting with a friend, in a house above the friends mother, so it not a complete cut off. I am quite excited for her, she is 18, has a job and this will be a good learning exercise for her to see what you actually have to do to run a house – she has no idea.

She also broke her wrist in a drunken slip on Saturday night, so I spent Sunday evening at the A and E clinic while they x-rayed and plastered her up. She could be off work for 4-6 weeks, though it was not a major break.

Giving up coffee

2006-11-08T09:00:00.000+13:00

It is now Monday, my third day without coffee, I am at work and I feel less than average. If I did not have a budget finalisation meeting this morning I would probably have stayed in bed.

The weather has been very warm and sunny, the first of the summer weather arrived for the weekend. I did run on Friday, ride on Saturday and run on Sunday, I am guessing part of the issue is dehydration, though I did drink a reasonable amount over the weekend. I am also wondering if there was a small element of heat stroke. Though it is hardly hot at the moment it has been hotter than normal and I wonder if my body needs to adjust.

• I am extremely tired after 3 lousy sleeps with Friday and Saturday nights being particularly bad, I am not sure if it is the caffeine withdrawals or just my normal cycle of bad sleep, though I feel worse than normal.
• Yesterday I had a really bad headache in the afternoon and early evening, I really do not like taking pain killers but if it kicks in again today I will have to pop some Nurofen or I will not survive the day at work.
• Most of yesterday I had a mildly upset stomach and it is not 100% right today, not sure what that is related to, caffeine or something I ate ?
• I have long suffered from pain in my lower back, a couple of visits to a osteopath a few years back resolved the issues and rarely suffer anymore, and can usually stretch it out. The pain has come back again, though I have not really started to stretch properly again. I will get onto that tonight.
• I have had a stiff/sore neck for about a week, not terrible pain, more frustrating and niggling.
• My legs hurt….. I very badly broke the “do not exceed the previous weeks exercise by more than 10% rule” so it is my own fault. I was planning on introducing some sprint reps into my training after tai chi tonight, but I will wait until next week.

It was my wifes turn to do softball this week so I went riding on Saturday morning with Miles, I took the single speed up to Woodhill forest. If the dry weather remains much longer then Woodhill is going to be un-rideable soon, but Riverhead will be fantastic ! We had another slow ride, kept the pace down on the flat and climbs to as close to easy chatting pace as possible. I am really enjoying these slow chatty non-stop rides. Rode up Powerball, where we stopped so I could adjust my chain, then hit Big Mumma, and the back trail to enchanted forest, where we had to walk one section of this trail, though it has been un-rideable for years, I must talk to the bike parks people about making a bypass to that section… We then rode Haggis and Northern Exposure and stopped before riding no brakes. Stopped again at the top of no brakes and then did Iron Horse, I kept the seat right up and didn’t do any of the jumps this time round. We had another small break before the steep climb up to the fun back section of Conifer Loop that links back into Haggis, followed up with Tree Huggas, Link, Cookie and finally Raceface down, back to the car. Though we kept a fairly sedate pace we did cover a fair bit of ground and I was quite tired when I got home.
On Saturday night we celebrated Guy Fawkes with friends, though I was quite tired and I am guessing the caffeine withdrawals were starting to kick in. I still slept badly though.

As usual I had planned to get up early on Sunday morning and go for a run before my wife went to work and as usual I stayed in bed till 10.00 reading a novel. Once I had all the shopping completed I did get out for a mid afternoon run along Exhibition drive. I took it very slow as my legs were extremely tight and almost painful. I ran for an hour and half at a very slow pace, running from Titirangi, 2 laps of Exe and back again. One of the sections took me 21 minutes, I can do that lap in 16 minutes if I apply myself, I was running that slowly. I did keep my heart rate under 150 though which was the goal.

I am definitely not ready to do any distance running at this stage, 15kms in an hour and a half and I was pretty wrecked, not a good sign.

Had a BBQ at our place, my head was so sore and one of the guests tuend up an hour early so I was very unprepared and had not done all the house work I wanted to do. It was an Ok night, but I was not really up to it.

Work trip to Tauranga

2006-11-05T12:58:00.000+13:00

I had a work trip to the Tauranga office on Friday, it was all kinda last minute so I did not try and arrange a ride bit took my running gear and planned on a run if the weather was OK.

In fact the day was awesome, warm and sunny with no wind. I finished work around 2.30 and drive up the road to Mt Maunganui and went for a run around the seaward base of the mount. I have never been round the base before so it was a great run, no idea of the distance but I ran for 50 minutes.

I then jumped into the sea here for about 30 seconds, it was still damn cold, before driving back to Auckland. It was a great ‘work’ day.

Tai Chi and Tuesday night riding

2006-11-02T12:54:00.000+13:00

The week at work has been a real shitter, not too sure why, it has been no different than any other week, I am just not up for work any more. I would take a holiday but have no idea what to do or where to go and I do not want to just hang around at home doing the odd ride on my own.

I had my first tai chi lesson on Monday night, it was ok, I am not sure what my real expectations were but this is a pretty low brow course at the local high school. Still it was kinda fun and the hour passed fairly quickly. We learnt a basic move involving 4 steps (stances ?), the instructor was not that verbose… Anyway I have a few things to practise this week.

Tuesday night I headed up to Murawai for a ride. I am still riding the AC with a shortened seat post and it just feels so weird on the first climb, I still ride the AC like a single speed hard tail, standing and pounding on the climbs, it kinda works but I am sure sitting and spinning on the climbs would be more effective and a lot less tiring.

Had a good ride, just the three of us this week, rode straight to the forest and hit up Dan’s track, then back up to the old National downhill, only had a couple of runs down the jump section then we went and rode a really really old track called Wild thing. Wild thing existed when I sued to ride there years ago, though there is only a short section of it left now. Still it was a bit of fun. We then pushed back up and rode down Mainline. I have not ridden this track before, it was pretty sandy at the top but once we got into the trees it firmed up a bit and man it was a fun track, I do like to lead on these pedally downhill tracks as I can hit it at my own pace…. From the end of Mainline we pushed most of the way back up AFL. I am loving this track, I really nailed most of it, missed one of the tricky bits that I by pass so lost some speed, but I reckon I had my fastest run down that track, I must get a speedo to find out.

Got back to the car after an hour and a half of riding at 8.00 and it was still pretty light.

the week wrapped up.

2006-10-29T12:02:00.000+13:00

It has been an interesting week, work has been as busy as usual and as frustrating as ever. I found that I slept really well over weekend but come Monday I slept badly again and have slept badly ever since. I am not really sure why I cannot sleep properly all the time I do not think I am overly stressed from work, certainly work is stressful but I have been in worse situations. I have decided on 2 courses of action, firstly I have long been thinking about starting something along the lines of yoga or tai chi. Primarily to help me relax, but also to help build some core strength, improve flexibility and balance and develop some breathing techniques. In the end I decided to try tai chi and the local high school has a community education course starting on Monday which I have signed up for. Secondly I have decided to give up coffee. I am going to reduce my intake this week with a plan to quit completely the following week, I am expecting a couple of weeks of hell when I stop though so I have started warning the family.

My youngest son, who turned 13 this week, has decided to join a few of his friends and play softball. This is pretty much going to kill Saturday morning riding. This weekend is out as it is the first game and I cannot miss that one. I am hoping/expecting my wife will go to every second game which means I can ride every second weekend at least. I hope to continue with the Tuesday night riding though.

With that in mind and with the Kaweka challenge coming up again February I am going to focus on running for a while, easier to get out and do before and after work - at least until I can get a decent bike for riding on the road. I am still keen to do the Kaweka run and then continue on and do a full Marathon later in the year. I will still do some events though, at least the last round of the Auckland champs and probably 1 or 2 24 hour team events depending on timing.

Yesterday we had my sons 13th birthday outing, we took him and 6 friends to the hot pools at Parakai for an afternoon session and BBQ dinner. At least with 12 and 13 year olds you do not need to watch them all the time, so my wife hung around the pool to provide food and drink and I got out for a run. I ran west for 45 minutes and then turned round and ran back. Fairly simple run, kept the pace down, though there was a reasonable westerly blowing. It was Ok, I was really knackered by the end and probably could not have gone out and done much more running. I think I could pull off a half marathon if I needed to right now but it would not be easy. Having said that in the last 8 days I have done a 1 hour run an hour twenty run and now an hour thirty, which is an awful lot more than in the last 3 or months so I should expect to be a bit tired. I will not run again until Thursday.

I hope to finally get the right seat post for the AC today...

A rainy day public holiday run

2006-10-23T14:29:00.000+13:00

Yay – another wet day, got to love long weekends ! Raining a bit more persistently today, though it is not heavy. I got up at 7.30 and went for a run.

Started doing the same Godley Rd, Portage Rd, Clark St, Titirangi Rd loop as Friday but carried on up through Titirangi and along Kohu Rd to the bottom of Scenic Drive were I looped back into Titirangi again and down to home. It took me 1 hour 19 minutes to complete the 13.5 km loop, which is not particularly fast really but I was pacing myself and there is a fair amount of climbing which is really the purpose of this run. I hope to get out this week and do some sprint runs at the park as well but we will see how it goes.

I did measure the run in the car today and took some section distances as well so I can start to build some runs with a reasonable idea of distance.

I planted some tomatoes, lettuces and beat root this afternoon, get the vege garden going for summer. Will have to see how long the enthusiasm for growing veges lasts, it is not ling usually…

Saturday ride

2006-10-22T16:36:00.000+13:00

Drizzly morning again today.

I got up early and went into work at 7.15 to print off some stuff for my wife and print, sign and scan a document for work.

From work I drove up to Woodhill for my normal Saturday morning single speed ride with Miles. Had a pretty good ride, kept the pace down and just rode for 2 hours, didn’t really stop much – gate crossings, adjusted brakes once early on, so it was a pretty solid nicely paced work out.

We rode Powerball to the main network, then down Spaghetti as far as Afterglow, then finished off with Tortellini. We then took the easy road option to Haggis then Northern Exposure, No Brakes, Python and the horrible Anaconda, I really do not like that trail it just goes on and on and mostly seems to be up hill, there is just no fun in that trail… After Anaconda we did the last section of Conifer and I cleaned the rooty pinch climb which I haven’t done for a while, then powered through the lovely flowy section just before it joins back into Haggis. After Haggis we rode Tree Huggas, Link, all of Cookie for a change before thrashing down Raceface Down back the car. It was a good ride, I really tried again to focus on body position through the downhill sections and keeping my fingers off the brakes. I believe I am getting better at this and I do appear to be faster. I only had a couple of moderately scary moments as I got the body postioning wrong going into rutted corners.

After the ride I spent the afternoon scaring the neighbours by working in the garden with my shirt off, weeding and digging over the vege patch...

Listening to some old XTC - Go 2 LP on vinyl

Day off work

2006-10-20T22:20:00.000+13:00

It is Labour Day in New Zealand on Monday so we all get the day off work. I have been feeling particularly sluggish this week, though I have actually got things done so I decided to take Friday off as well for a 4 day weekend. My plan for the day was to get a decent run in and then go do a whole bunch of shopping stuff, present for juniors 13th birthday, wheel barrow, seat post etc so the weekend can be spent doing stuff and avoiding the shopping areas at all costs. Well that half turned to crap as junior ended up being off school as well so I could only do half the shopping. He was off school to attend a funeral of an old cub leader, well he wasn’t old, he died of cancer 2 days ago at the age of 54. My wife went to the funeral, but I decided not to attend as I did not really know the family that well and some days I am a selfish asshole. I did get the wheel barrow…

As usual when a public holiday long weekend come around the weather turns to pants…cloud and drizzle forecast for the weekend.

I did get out for a run, did my almost 10km loop down Godley Rd, Portage Rd, Clark St, up Titirangi Rd and back down Godley again. The weather was OK, slight rain, no wind not too warm, but I still ran like someone who is 2 -3 kilos over weight. The fun felt Ok just not very fast, though at 55 minutes it was way off the slowest I have done it.

Seat post still not in the shop !

Tuesday riding

2006-10-20T09:46:00.000+13:00

I have tried to source a new seat post for the AC so I could get the seat up a bit higher for the more XC focused rides, though the local bike shop had loads of posts in varying sizes they did nnot have one for me, I do have one on order though. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if there was some standardisation ?

This week I got a new work phone - so I have taken a couple of sample shots, and for the first time in ages I have been able to upload photos to here.

The riding area

I managed to get away from work nice and early on Tuesday and had a reasonably slow, though stress free drive up to Murawai. 10 of us rode this week so we took the longer ride option and rode all the way up the road to the dodgy walking track down hill. The AC is a pain to ride up prolonged (it is only 1.5km but it feels prolonged) climbs when you are sitting so low your knees are banging into your chin. The ride down was not too bad, faster than I have done it on the SS but I am still such a chicken on fast DH runs. The brakes on the AC were really grabby, felt like they were either on or off, very little modulation, could be just need some time to settle after not being used for a while, or maybe they just need a good bleed.

We rode back up and into the forest and then up to the top of the old down hill course for a play on the little jumps. the climb to the topI had replaced the cleats in my shoes so my feet were not popping out of the pedals and I was a lot more comfortable getting little bits of air. Had a fun session, man - the groms are just so comfortable leaping about on any sort of bike…

We then dropped down and did the riverside trail and by then it was too dark to ride back up to do AFL so we cruised back along the road to the cars.

Another good ride.

Spring has sprung

2006-10-15T17:00:00.000+13:00

Yay spring is here, it has been quite windy the last few days but it is certainly warmer and now day light saving is here we have light until 8.00 or so in the evening.

I am going to try and not waste my evenings and at least get out in the garden and do ‘stuff’, the place is a bit out of control but I have no real plans so will just do the basic stuff like weeding and pruning.

I have been fairly productive the last few days;

Edged the lawn with my bro-in-laws weed whacker – that was fun.
Mowed the lawn twice, it needed doing really badly.
Pruned the trees over the path so now I can wheel the bin down without hitting my head.
Drilled out and replaced the cleats in my old shoes so I can ride with the platform spd pedals on the AC.
Bought the wrong size seat post for the AC so need to return it.
Bough some herbs and started a little herb garden for summer.
Tided and swept the garage.
Cleaned the bikes
Cleaned the car

I am turning into a bit of a porkenstein again, we have had 2 nights for dinner at friends this weekend, both nights I ate lots and drank too much. This week I really must start to turn this back around.

I did get out for a light run today, did 1 session on Exhibition drive, was thinking of doing 2 but ran out of time again.

Right less type more work in garden…

First Riverhead ride of the spring.

2006-10-15T16:48:00.000+13:00

As we ha not had a lot of rain in the last few weeks, discounting the heavy fall with hail on Tuesday, Graham wanted to go and check out some of the trails are Riverhead to see how rideable they are. The Freeriden boys had a loop that was supposed to be fairly dry but we did not get organised enough to get a map of the loop so decided to go and check out some of the tracks we rode last year.

Miles, Brendon, Graham and I rode today - with The Boys on their fully’s and me on the single speed. The ride up Barlow Rd to the start of Pattersons has not got any less steep but it felt OK, I have definitely gotten stronger over the winter period which is good. Pattersons 1 and 2 were a mixed affair, muddy in parts and dry in others, but the horses have been through there over winter and track is in awful condition, very hard work for a fairly flat track, not a lot of flow and the exposed roots are a lot further out of the track giving the upper body a good workout as well. I managed to get to the top of Christ hill Ok but was pretty broken, and took the opportunity of being first there to have a bit of a break. Richies is not one of my favourite tracks at the best of times, the down hill section was surprisingly dry so there was plenty of traction but there was some huge bogs on the flat sections and some of them were pretty smelly… As we were pushing time and the trail was not getting easier to ride we went left at the bottom of Richies with the intention of getting to the Chatham road trails and then to bottom of Anzac Rd. It appears the Chatham Rd trails have all disappeared now with all the trees and we ended up on a long section of old fire road that was at least heading in the right general direction. At the end of the fire road I was not 100% sure where we were but headed off again to the left and after a hundred metres or so ended up at the end of Anzac Rd which was most cool. Anzac was a fair old slog to the top, I had forgotten the final few metres was quite steep and I was again happy to get there first so I could suck some air down before the others arrived. The final run down Nature trail was Ok, again not a favourite trail as there are a few sections I get off and walk as they are too steep, both up and down, for me. I must get control of my fear and ride the down sections, they are perfectly rideable as Graham shows us every time.

Not a bad ride, ended up muddier than expected, muddy enough to clean the bike when I got home which I have had to do for a while !

First ride on the AC

2006-10-10T21:42:00.000+13:00

I had a great ride tonight.

I got the AC ¾ sorted on Sunday, all I need now is a long seat post as the one in the bike has been cut down really short so Dom could drop the seat. There was just 4 of us riding tonight Pete and his 2 teenagers and we got away early enough for a hour and half ride without lights. Pete and I rode our AC’s and the kids had their DH bikes so this was going to be e bit of fun…

The wind was very strong off the beach so we decided to avoid the normal circuit and just get into the forest and play on the fun trails. We rode up to the top of Dan’s down that trail then back up to the top of the old national DH course. We played around on the small jumps on the this track for a while and I had a bit of a play on a new Giant Glory which was a lot of fun, these DH bikes get air born so easy compared to the DMR. I was riding with clip pedals and the cleat in my old shoes are too loose to really jump as my feet keep coming out which is not a good look – or feeling when you land on the top tube. So I kept it small and only hit the flowy jumps – not that I was going to bigger anyway…. From the midway point of the old nat’s track we moved on to the AFL track and sessioned a couple small jumps there for 15-20 minutes. I did get more and more comfortable hitting the jumps at higher speeds which was really cool – and the whole idea of getting the AC going again.

We then rode back to Pete’s place via a small loop down towards the beach that was like riding into a sand blaster, the wind was so strong.

A great first ride on the AC, will replace the cleats in the shoe’s so I can stay stuck to the bike.

Single Speed Poker race day

2006-10-08T15:24:00.000+13:00

Friday night was spent making up card packs for the dealers, as I had no real idea of how many people were likely to ride or how many of the volunteers were going to show up. I guessed on 8 volunteers and 22 riders so made up 8 packs of 20 cards each and a nice distribution of high value cards for the furthest away dealers, but a few wild cards thrown in for good measure ! I had dealers standing in Big Mumma, Spaghetti, at Dead Mans Corner, Tree Huggas, No Brakes, Iron Horse, Slipperies Delight and the beer stop in the old car park.

Race daydawned nice and sunny and I wandered the road at 7.45 for a paper and came home had coffee and toast. It was looking like being a top day, naturally half an hour later the cloud had moved in and the wind had picked up a bit…

I was quite nervous about the race, maybe nervous is a bit extreme, but I was certainly something, too much energy, luckily I had a few house jobs to do before I packed up and left. I had borrowed my brother in laws petrol weed wacker so I made good use of that and flattened the grass edges which is always fun, petrol powered tools are so cool.

I left home at 11.00 with a car load of bike, (which I didn’t ride) beer and prizes and headed for the supermarket to buy some basics for the BBQ. Got to the forest about an hour before the start and found a good spot to set up the barbie for race headquarters.

The riders and helpers started to show up soon after I arrived and the time before the race disappeared in a blur of chatting and getting peoples names down for the prize draw after the event. Luckily all the people who said they would help out, did and I was amazed to get 28 riders, which was a few more than I expected.

There was a small amount of chaos as I read the rules and shifted everyone to the start line, some of the helpers were not quite ready so I had to hold everyone back for a few minutes. Next event I will get this organised a bit better, I wanted to make sure the riders knew what the ‘dealers’ looked like so they knew who to ride up to in the forest.

Once the riders left 5 minutes late 2:05 I went and borrowed the bike parks BBQ and got that set up, I then hung about for an hour a half waiting for the riders to come back for food and a drink at 3:30.

The BBQ and prize giving were a bit of a blur for me, I remember having a couple of beers, cooking one hell of a lot of sausage, chatting to a lot of riders, handing out spot prizes and generally having a good time. The race was won by a girl with 4 kings.

The feedback on the day was everyone enjoyed it, which was just great, I wasn’t sure how people would find it. With the larger number of riders, more people would have missed out on cards then I planned. There was enough interest to run one of these again next year but next time I will ensure there are more cards and more dealers out there. At least next time it will be easy to get interest going now everyone knows what the heck it is all about !

Photos are here ;

http://aucklandsinglespeed.spaces.live.com

Race day tomorrow

2006-10-06T20:26:00.000+13:00

Plans for the single speed poker race are as complete as they are ever going to be with race day tomorrow. This being my first eventy racey thing I have ever done I am a bit pensive about how it will all turn out, but at least the weather has turned it on for me - big blue skies forecast for the day.

I have the prize giving beer and more than I expected, prizes from Vorb.org.nz arrived in the mail on Wednesday and the rest should turn up tomorrow with their respective riders.

I guess now it comes down to getting enough volunteers to lur in the forest and enough riders to make it fun !

I have put together a blog site with some info about the race and a place to store photos.

The weather was filthy early in the week with massive rains and high winds, the winds are just about gone now, but it is still quite cold. I went out for a ride on my own on Wednesday night to check out the tracks and the rain has really settled them down, they are hard are going to be fast. I had an OK ride, I havent ridden on my own for a while and it was quite a challenge to keep motivated... It was an Ok ride, though I had issues with one a screw in one of my cleats and had to stop and tighten it twice.

Last night I went around to my friend Darin's house with the AC and he took out the BB, which is pretty knackered, greased it up and installed it, it is still stuffed but at least it doesn't creak so bad....

Still have issues getting one of the flat pedals out of the cranks, the crank insert keeps coming out with the pedal, we have super glued it back in again and I will try and remove the pedals again tomorrow morning. I will take the AC for a ride on Sunday morning, I haven't ridden a fully for a while, and have never ridden the AC in anger before. It should be fun !

Fingers crossed the race will go well tomorrow

I am keen to organise someting else if it does !

81.2 KG

2006-10-03T20:52:00.000+13:00

Arse - a kilo heavier than 2 weeks ago.

Shows what a week of bad diet and doing less exercise than normal does.

But now for the good news.

Last night I took possesion of 4 9 packs of Matakana Lager for the race this weekend.

That is 1 9 pack for first place, 2 for the beer stop on the ride and an extra pack that I can share around the volunteers. - Awesome

My fitness is slipping

2006-10-02T13:46:00.000+13:00

I must weigh myself tonight when I get home from work. I have been rather slack lately and have not kept up a regular exercise routine, though this is quite typical of how I, and I assume many others, work. I had a good couple of weeks on the gym and I can feel it all slipping away, over my belt in some cases. In the last couple of weeks I have really hit the chocolate biscuits, chips and ice cream again. What is worse is I have bought (relatively) expensive protein shakes to have as a mid afternoon snack to replace the free biscuits at work, and I am now having both the shake and the biscuits and some days I even drop $1.20 into the snack box and have an early biscuit. Bad, bad, bad.

So this week it is back to exercising more regularly again, 2 rides, 2 runs. Some time on the gym thing in the sleep out and walking the stairs at work.

I have also decided to have a look at something along the lines of Tai Chi. I want to find an activity that I can do to improve fitness, build core strength and help with flexibility, balance, breathing and stretching. It looks like it could fit the bill. It also looks like an activity I can do at home to train without specialist equipment. I hope to find something over the next few weeks that is local, in the evenings and not on a Tuesday night so I can still ride.

I had my first crack at the 14 floor stair walk today, it hurt !

Sunday ride with the lads

2006-10-01T17:24:00.000+13:00

I have had a really sluggish week with my wife away. I ate dinner just before bed after riding Tuesday night, ate out Wednesday night my wife came home Thursday night so I cooked, we had burgers and chips on Friday night at friends and I had a couple of wines, went shopping on Saturday and I cooked Saturday night and had a couple of beers then as well. I seemed to have spent the whole week eating and/or drinking. I feel fat, slow and uncomfortable. The weather finally turned to crap on Saturday afternoon, the forecast for the whole week had been rain but it managed to hold off, when it rained it did rain though ! heavy and short. I decided to go run in the afternoon, and luckily by the time I had got organised the rain had stopped. I did a quick splash along Exhibition drive, ran it in just over 32 minutes which was reasonably quick for me but I felt awkward the whole way.

Day light saving started this morning, so I had to get up an hour earlier than normal, luckily one of the riding group sent a text to see who was riding or I would have slept late – shame – it was the best sleep I had had in ages.

While the clouds were quite heavy overhead it wasn’t raining, and didn’t rain until very late in the afternoon, lightening storm at the moment ! so the ride remained dry. I was riding with the jumping crew so it was not a high paced or long ride, had a lot of fun and it was good to spend a couple of hours with the lads. I popped the single speed off a couple of jumps but I am having trouble getting the front wheel off the ground at the moment, I just cannot seem to ‘pop’ it , not sure why. I had a couple of close calls on jumps on the Big Mama trail with front wheel landings. I think I need to practise more. I was going to ride the AC, but still have not got around to getting it completely rideable. Aim to do that this week if I can though with the race next weekend I won’t be riding anyway and the following weekend is round 2 of the Auckland champs.

Rode Big Mama and Afterglow with the lads. Josh did the biggest jump I have ever seen on the junior mama jump, it was just huge, I think he scared himself as the landing is sketchy. I then did a sprint up Link down the side of Cookie and Raceface Down to the car.

Not a bad ride, nice and relaxing for the most part.

Broke out some old Brian Eno vinyl this afternoon, felt like listening to something cruisy.

"Japanese" food

2006-09-28T21:23:00.000+12:00

My family are still mostly away so I met a mate after work for a couple of beers and then we went doen to Ken's Japanese restaurant.

We sat on stools in front of where the chef was cooking and drank a beer and ate. it was a damn good evening. I was a bit annoyed I had the car as I could have stayed there a lot longer eating this great Japanese BBQ food and drink Sapporo. The atmosphere in the place was so convivial. I am definately going back.

Tuesday night ride

2006-09-27T22:38:00.000+12:00

With most of the family away I took the opportunity to slip out for a Dodgy Tuesday ride. My intention was to take the AC out but it was still not in a rideable state. I got it back from the shop yesterday and the pivot bearings were all done nicely but the shop wanted the BB was pretty dodgy and it was making one hell of a noise. I was happy to ride with it like that but in the end I had to flag it as I could not get one of the pedals off, the crank insert came off with the pedal and there was no way I was going to ride with flats so the trusty DMR was loaded into the car again.

The weather over the past few days has been gorgeous and as I was having one of those days at work when I could just not focus, I got a good lunch time walk in to stretch my legs out, it took a while to open them up so I am glad I got out prior to the ride. I arrived at Pete’s place at Murawai and there was a good crowd already there, nice mix of teenagers and older folks and there was another single speeded DMR as well which was good, all up 9 of us rode, the biggest crowd yet.

We rode up the road as normal and down the walking track then back to gannet colony and down the steps, traditional start and I am getting more and more comfortable with the steps though I am still one of the slowest riders down both those trails. I have realised that compared to the other riders my home made lights suck big time on the down hills. I am just not getting a range of light that makes me comfortable to hit things at speed. They are ok in the tighter slower stuff or on trails where I know every corner and every root, but for speed in not too familiar territory they just suck !

In the forest we rode up past the start of Dan’s track which we normally do to look at a new trail being built by one of the young guys. It was steep and short with a number of lethal looking jumps. I like steep and short and I am not opposed to jumps, but what pissed me off a bit on this trail was the first jump I saw had a small sand kicker to a steep bank tranny, nothing wrong with that you might think, except the mong had dug a pit on the transition forcing it into a step down. If I had been coming down the hill I would have hit that jump as it was tiny and then landed front wheel first into the pit and brained myself. Given that we are not supposed to ride here and the land owners seem to tolerate sensible trails and well designed jumps – and there are some big jumps here, building something stupid that some one is going to get hurt on is brainless. Anyway….

We rode back and did Dan’s trail which is a fun and well designed short downhill trail and then rode the riverside trail as normal. We then rode back up to the top of AFL through the back road, I haven’t ridden this road for a while and got a bit of a sprint on one of the climbs until I realised/remembered this was the start of the climb – I ended up walking the top of it, it just seemed to go on and on (we are talking Auckland climbing here folks so on and on is not much !)

AFL is such a fun trail to ride down, I really want to do it during the day so I can see here I am going and get to learn all the corners and where the jumps are. I missed one corner and went straight off the side of track, but it is just scrubby cutty grass so no injuries.

From the end of AFL we rode back to the cars and went home.

Auckland Champs race 1

2006-09-26T21:06:00.000+12:00

The weather for race day was great, the first really warm day of spring, maybe even too hot for racing so early in the season (especially the day after seeing a documentary about global warming…). There has been a warning over the last few days that the hole in the ozone layer has a temporary tear in it so today was supposed to be particularly hazardous with extreme levels of ultra-violet radiation.

The first round of the four round series was held in Woodhill forest so it was a good place for me to start as I am familiar with all the trails and will know how to pace myself against the rest of the riders in the expert 40+ class. I arrived in the forest with plenty of time to spare and got my registration completed with about any hassles. As always there seemed to be very few riders given that there are a few thousand riders in Auckland, probably only 150 across all the classes. This is a real shame as the racing is fun, it may be called the Auckland Champs, but a lot of the punters, like me, are only there for the fun of racing and testing oneself against peers.

The race was scheduled for 5 8km laps for the 40+ men with a lap cut off of 1 hour 45. I wasn’t 100% clear on that at the start as I had never experienced that in an event before, soon found out what it meant though! The course was supposed to be fast and for some it was, I thought it was tough for single speeding, but then I am not a racer.

The race village was next to the training ground by the old car park. The loop started with a 1km climb up to the top of Link, then down the fence line between the Travis trail and the road we just climbed. We then rode through the valley between Link and Upland and walked up the steep climb a the end of the valley towards Enchanted Forest, down Enchanted Forest and straight through the firebreak down the middle of the Haggis block. We then climbed No brakes – (this was going to hurt) down Conifer the wrong way up the nasty pinch climb and into Tree Huggas, then across the finish line and back up the hill. There seemed to be a lot more up than down… I completed 4 laps before being stopped on the way out for my 5th at the 2 hour mark. If I had realised I would have ridden harder on the last lap but I would not have made up the 8 minutes I was behind the single speeder who finished in front of me.

As there were a few single speeders riding the organisers, at our request, split us off into a separate class which was cool – and even better the class will remain through out the series.

I managed to average around 30 minute laps which was slower than the lap times for the Taupo race even though the course was shorter, it was definitely a tougher course.

In the end I came 6th out of 9 single speeders which I was happy with.

Inconvienient Truth

2006-09-23T20:30:00.000+12:00

My wife and I took our youngest son to the airport this morning as he is flying down to Nelson to stay with my sister and her young boys just out of Blenheim for the first 10 days of the school holidays. I think everyone is looking forward to his trip. My oldest son has moved out for a couple of weeks and is supposedly living with his girl fried and her family. I am not 100% sure, it is a major concern to us, but not something here. On Monday my wife goes away for a holiday with a friend for 3 nights so there will be me and my daughter home for a few days. I think I will squeeze a couple of night rides in 

My wife and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth this afternoon, interesting movie, I liked it, Gore is a good presenter and covered the at times technical material in an interesting and easy to understand fashion. I will need to think more on the film.

Listening to some D and B - NZ band Concorde Dawn. I have never been a fan of D and B but I really like this, my daughter bought their CD.

The week wrapped up

2006-09-22T21:09:00.000+12:00

Well it has been a busy week since I came back from the Day Night Thriller, caught up on sleep on Sunday night after a family birthday dinner at my parents.

The first race of the Auckland MTB XC Champs is this Sunday so I intended on taking the exercise easy this week while watching my diet. Sadly I have managed over exceed in the taking it easy part but have stuffed my self stupid with all sorts of crap all week – a real chocolate biscuit blow out. I am looking forward to the race even though I am doing it on the single and really expect to more last than first. There are some quick guys in expert 40+.

The Auckland DH series schedule has also been posted and I am sort of interested in having a go in one of the easy races. I will at least turn up for practise day and see how I go. I will ride this on the AC, though it is no way near a DH bike it will be heaps quicker than the DMR. I have taken the AC into get the rear swing arm pivot bearings replaced. Hopefully that is all that is wrong with the bike as I do not want to spend too much money on it. It has only been ridden a couple of times this year as number 1 son is not interested in riding any more. I plan on riding it on Tuesday night for my first Dodgy Tuesday ride in a while.

Went for a run last night, did the Godley, Portage, Astley, Taupo road 8k, loop. It was OK, I haven’t run for a while. I neglected to stretch after and later in the evening I really was quite tight.

The race is coming along nicely. I have had enquiries from over 30 people now, quite a few I have never heard of before so I am getting a bit excited about the whole thing. I have also had some spot prizes donated by the NZ Fox clothing distributor which is very cool as well…

Day night Thriller 12 hour race

2006-09-17T16:28:00.000+12:00

Stayed the night at Nici’s family’s bach in Kinloch as we are down in Taupo for the annual Day night Thriller 12 hour team race. I am in single speed team riding under the Essence Bicycle banner again. My normal event buddies Miles, Nici and Graham are riding in geared teams. This is the 6th time I have been down for this race, though it is my first year on the single speed.

Had my usual pre-race really bad nights sleep so got up when I heard noises coming from the kitchen about 6.15. Had breakfast and a couple of coffees with Miles and then we drive to race site meeting some of Miles team mates on the way. Their teams had sites in block A but I was way the heck up in block C. So after helping put the tent up I humped my ten tons of crap over to my team. We had 2 teams of 4 single speeders racing in the open mens 4/5 person class. All the usual suspects were there plus a couple of guys I have not raced with before but had met at previous rides. We had riders from all over the north island riding with us which was pretty cool.

The race itself started at 10.30 AM and our first rider completed the first lap in the chaos of 400+ riders on a fixed gear bike – the nutter came past in 38th place, setting a big challenge for the rest of us. Apart from some screw ups with the timing system that saw us, plus others lose laps the race went well. We were not overly serious about it all, but every dug it in for their laps and we ended up 22nd out of our class of about 120 teams with the other teams not far behind in 27th place. We completed 28 of the 8.2km laps with only 1 lap over 30 minutes long, my longest lap was 27 and something minutes so I was very pleased. I have never done 7 laps before and never have all my laps been under 30 minutes, I am getting fitter and faster !

From our site the course was flat on a dusty/sandy path for about 100 meters then it shot down a grass hill with a tasty off camber corner at the bottom that was sure to see some carnage if it rained. After a further 200 metres of open riding the track started a gradual climb into an open pine forest. The single track of previous years had been widened the whole way to double track to allow for easier passing it had also been extended by quite a bit as well which was cool. It was not in any way a technical course, but it do have some small pinch climbs, some down bits and some flat bits so it was fun in the forest. After the forest there were 2 nasty little pinch climbs that I managed to ride up very time, though it was close a couple of times and then there was a kilometre or so of riding through the camp sites and over the timing line back to the site were you changed rider.

Not sure where we came out of the whole event as the results and timing was a bit screwed this year, normally it is fine so not going to whinge too much.

I left my team as the last rider crossed the finish line and made my way back over to Miles car and he drove us home. I had to be home as my youngest did not organise himself somewhere to be on Sunday when my wife went to work and I believe it is unfair if I tell where to go just so as I can go off and have fun. Miles was happy to drive home as well so we did. My wife decided not to work and went with the youngest and stayed the night at a friends place – oh well. I Got home at 2:30 AM, had a shower and went to bed. Slept till 6.30 and work up starving and 1 year older. I am 44 today. I got up at 9.00 and made myself eggs and baked beans on toast, as that was kinda all there was.

Went and picked my wife and youngest up and had lunch with friends got a couple of good books for my birthday so spent most of the afternoon reading and dozing.

3 rides in 3 different locations in 1 week - Awesome !

Whirinaki Ride

2006-09-15T12:09:00.000+12:00

The track is in the Whirinaki National Park which is managed by the Department of Conservation (DOC). It has only been very recent that DOC have started to allow mountain bikers back into selected wilderness areas so we were keen to show our support for this initiative.

I would like to say I have been looking forward to this ride for a long time but since I only read about it in the June/July NZ MTBer magazine and the trail only officially opened in mid-August I could be called a liar. I can say I have been looking forward to this ride for a very short time, but I have been really really looking forward to it! The review in the magazine and the feedback I have read from other riders suggests this 2 or so hour ride in virgin native bush is just stunning so it sounded like the perfect warm up for the Day Night thriller 12 hour event the following day.

My normal riding buddy – Miles (I am going to use names from now on) picked me up at 7.00 AM Friday morning with coffee at the BP being the first stop for the day. We had an uneventful, and quite fast trip to Rotorua arriving about 30 minutes earlier than expected so we stopped in for a coffee at Fat Dog, met up with Brent who was riding with us and then went looking for a bakery to pick up some lunch for later on. I spotted a bakery and noticed it was next to a new bike shop Kiwi Bikes, owned by Jeff who custom builds bike frames. I have never met Jeff before but have seen his beautifully crafted steel frames under a number of fellow single speeders, in fact there are 2 of them in the Essence Bicycle SS teams at tomorrow’s race. Jeff is a pretty cool guy, had a good chat, rode his SS around and got measured up in case I want to order a frame ! – which I do. This could be the plan for next year. While I love the geometry of the DMR it is a bit too small for XC racing, a frame an inch or so larger but keep the style and geometry of the DMR would be perfect. We then carried on down towards the Whirinaki forest, I have not been down to that part of NZ in well over 20 years, it is quite rugged, quite beautiful and for the folk living there, quite poor, verging on Deliverance country. We got to the car park earlier than expect and had to wait around for a while for Colin who was coming up from Wellington.

Though the day had started off wet and cold, by the time we hit the forest the clouds had parted and we spent an hour waiting here ;

Could there be anything better ? I really regret not having a decent camera, my next purchase major purchase, even before bike stuff, is going to be a camera.

Once Colin arrived we set off on the ride, the trail was wonderfully crafted, a fairly gentle gradient led the way up into the hills. For most of the rise the track was fairly wide single track, well benched and with a number of water bars, there were a couple of fire road sections and one log ride over a gully. The whole track was easily rideable, though I chose to walk a couple of sections to avoid blowing out the day before a race.

At the top of the climb we stopped here for photos and a snack.

The forest was incredible to ride through, sub-tropical native bush full of massive Tawa, Kahikatiha and Rimu trees (I think). From the mid-way stop there was a 1-2km downhill that was grin inducingly good, not steep, just long and swoopy, fast but not furious – oh was I smiling when it ended…

There was another longish climbing section out of the park, which reduced the width of the grin a bit but it is such a lovely place that even climbing was good.

After 1.45 we popped out of the forest and into the car park and into the waiting arms of 2 DOC workers. These were the 2 guys who built the track, neither were bikers – they said so, but you could tell by their size ! They had had some guidance from one of the local Rotorua riders but the rest of the trail was there own work. It was hard to believe that this trail had not been built by riders and experienced trail builders, it was so well constructed. They were so keen to discuss the track with us, their enthusiasm was quite infectious, we discussed various sections of the trail and why they did it the way they did and did we like the log, and were the water bars too intrusive. Great to see such enthusiasm for delivery a quality product from DOC.

After they left Miles and I took a slow drive down to Taupo and purchased some supplies for the race tomorrow. We then drove out to our Friday night accommodation with Graham and Nici at Nici’s family bach in Kinloch, had a beer or two and went to bed.

It was a great day !

Oropi Grove ride

2006-09-12T20:40:00.000+12:00

I had a work trip to Tauranga booked in today, conveniently one of the Vorb Tauranga locals had a bit of free time in the afternoon so we planned to hook up for an afternoon ride at Oropi Grove.

Had a painfully slow drive to Tauranga in the morning, I left home at 6.45 AM thinking I would miss the worst of the traffic, damn road works proved me wrong, it took me an hour to get to the BP fuel stop on the motorway, get a coffee and back on the road. 3 hours to Tauranga – slow !

However, work went pretty well, I had the audit complete by 12.00, the network upgrade went pretty good at mid-day and most things were wrapped up by 1.00. I went to catch up with a friend for a coffee at 2.00 and then managed to clear the office by 3.30 to go to Oropi for a ride. I have been pretty lucky with getting rides in when I go to Tauranga on work trips, and you would think I could find the damn place…. No ! I had instructions from a guy in the office plus instructions from the guy I was meeting; they sort of conflicted so I ended up getting quite lost. To compound this my horn started to go off kind of randomly, which was a bit embarrassing as it hooted at the car in front of me at a red light. Luckily I found an auto electrician who spent an entire 10 seconds disabling it for me. Once that was sorted I got new directions and soon found my way to the bike park and met my riding buddy.

The weather was good but there had been a bit of rain over the weekend, so the tracks were a bit greasy in places, most of the track was pretty good, but I did slide off once when I my front wheel did not go round a corner at the same pace as the rest of the bike. We rode at fairly decent pace, not too fast but definitely not slow, we also hardly stopped so it was quite a good pre-race build up ride. There is not a lot of trail at Oropi, In the 50 minutes we were riding we covered most of the trails and one section twice, nice mix of short climbs and twisty downhills. It is a fun place to ride with heaps of little (and not so little jumps and drops to play on).

It was a good ride, I felt good getting back into the car for the long drive home.

No injuries and no mechanicals, though I do need to buy some more brake pads before I go away at the weekend.

A rare sunday ride.

2006-09-11T19:04:00.000+12:00

My wife worked Saturday this week so I was able to do a Sunday ride with my old buddies, it was good to ride with them again so soon after the last time. It was lucky really as the weather on Saturday was just awful with really heavy rain, Sunday was no summer’s day but at least the rain held off for the ride. The great thing about Woodhill is it sand based so the really heavy rain does not cause too much damage to track or create miles of bog land. The tracks were the wettest I can remember though with some massive puddles. So bad I had to clean my bike when I got home, which is really rare after a Woodhill ride…

For various reasons only 2 of the Sunday crew turned up, along with my normal Saturday riding buddy there were just the 4 of us. With all the miserable weather the car park was quite empty as well which is pretty unusual for a Sunday.

I was still getting over the head cold so the first climb up to the main riding hour was almost a struggle. The old Sunday crew are a pretty slow bunch, so I was fairly settled into a slow ride with lots of breaks, which really suited how I was feeling. We meandered along through the first few stage of Spaghetti and then took a run down Afterglow. I dropped my seat for the down hill section and really had a blast riding down it, took all but the big jump at the end as well, so really getting some confidence back in the air. I think once I get the AC all fixed I will take some time and go do some jumps and try to get into doing some of the bigger ones again.

Took a bit of a slow grind out through Fattucine and then I did a sprint up the link trial because it was there. Slow meander through Cookie and another sprint down Raceface down back to the car.

Not a bad ride, nice to see the guys again and good to blow some of the last of the head cold out.

Sick

2006-09-05T21:26:00.000+12:00

Bugger I am sick again

Second time this year, I am never sick more than once a year. So far just a crappy head cold and nothing too bad, though I did not ride tonight on the normal dodgy Tuesday ride.

I am hoping to sneak out tomorrow night if I can though the forecast is pretty average, well it is for rain..

I bought the new Drive By Truckers CD yesterday with the CD vouchers I got. It is not bad, but I think I prefered the early darker stuff. I havent had a good listen yet though.

Sunday run

2006-09-03T21:25:00.000+12:00

Sunday was Fathers Day – so naturally there were no children about to welcome in the day with me or make me breakfast. I had a few wines last night so the day started slowly. I couldn’t be bothered riding which was a surprise. I had breakfast about 9 and got out for a run at about 10.00.

I ran up through Titirangi and along exhibition drive and back, about 13.5k with a nice hill to start. Felt Ok though my time was a bit slow at 1:11.

Though in the day I started to come down with a crappy head cold, so I guess that was a key to my average run.

Got a nice stainless hip flask and cd vouchers for Fathers day.

2006-09-02T21:23:00.000+12:00

A normal ride for me and my various riding crews is to ride a trail, usually as hard as possible and then stop at the end of the trail for a chat and wait for the group to reform. The plan for this and next weeks Saturday morning ride is to do 3 x 30 minute non-stop sessions as a final build up to the 12 hour event in 2 weeks. Most of the trails in Woodhill are about 10 minutes long so I am very used to a 10 minute ride, rest, another 10 minute ride. While I can now do these rides at a reasonable pace, I need to be able to easily sustain 30 minutes at pace.

It was another good riding day, cloudy and cool with no wind. 3 of us rode this morning same as crew as last week. We took the first climb up Powerball at a leisurely pace as a warm up and then started the first 30 minute ride on Big Mama, I tried to keep to a fairly regular pace along the trails and was feeling good at the top of the Big Mama hill, possibly the easiest I have done it on the SS. By the end of Big Mama I had a bit of a gap on the other two riders, so I dropped the pace a touch as we went into Big Mama’s tail. I haven’t ridden that trail for ages, may even be the first time on the SS, the trail starts off quite nice with a swooping twisty ride down hill before rolling up and down for a lot longer than I remembered. Pretty much hit the 30 minute mark at the end of the trail. I have developed a really bad habit of riding with fingers over the break levers – I have dropped this to one finger now. But what this means is I feather brakes going into most corners, whether I need to or not, this is very very evident on trails I do not ride much. Today I really focused on keeping all my fingers around the bars except on down hill sections where I tried to brake as little as possible. I think I succeeded, I definitely went into some corners faster than I felt comfortable with but I never came close to crashing so I have new boundaries to push in my drive to be faster round the track.

Next ride was Upland, Lightening, Enchanted forest, all of Haggis and Tree Huggas. It took just over 30 minutes. I stopped briefly on Haggis to make sure my riding friends went straight ahead rather than taking the turn into Conifer. When we stopped we got passed by a rider who was hitting a nice fast pace so I caught him and hung on his rear wheel for most of the trail until he ducked off near the start of No Brakes. I did get run down and passed by a fast rider at the end of Haggis though. Man I haven’t been passed while riding for months, it sucks…

Next lap was a quick ride to the end Link, Cookie, Off Piste 2 and Raceface down. I haven’t done Off Piste for months so that was kinda fun. This last section took almost 30 minutes as well, though we were chatting as we rode.

Good ride, 3 30 minute rides as planned.

I have been listening to a bit of Slayer lately, really liking them at the moment.

Thursday quick run

2006-09-01T14:51:00.000+12:00

In my effort to capitalise on the 2 solid weeks of gym work I did last month I really want to get a couple of runs in each week as well as my 1 – 2 rides. If I can get an hour long run and a shorter run once a week I will be reasonably happy. My original plan was to do at least 1 morning run a week as I did get used to getting up at 5.30 to go to the gym. 2 weeks later I have failed miserably to get up before my normal work time of 6.48 – damn.

I did however go for a quick run last night. My goal was to the gently rolling 4.2km return run down Godley rd in under 20 minutes. I started off at a good pace and was 200 metres or so into the run before I realised my watch was not going. Arse. I ran the rest at a decent pace and set my watch at the half way point to see how I would have tracked, the return is slightly more up hill than the first leg so it was not a great test. I completed the return leg in 10:38 which could have been an under 20 but I doubt it. I did struggle a bit on the return. I really do not like running after a meal and I had stomach pains which I do not normally get.

Next week I focus on a morning run..

For this Saturdays ride I am planning on doing 2 or 3 30 minute non stop bursts to start getting used to short bursty rides before the day night thriller in 2 weeks time.

Another Dodgy Tuesday ride

2006-08-30T14:25:00.000+12:00

Had a great Tuesday night ride this week, there was only 2 of us riding so the stops were less and the pace up a bit. We seemed to cover a lot more ground than normal, though we were being fairly sifty and chatting all the way.

Started off with the 2.5km ride up the road to the walking track, that we took fairly cautiously, I must learn to DH faster, at least trust myself more on these night trails. As the wind was not so bad this week we decided to ride up to the gannet colony trail and slowly drop down the stair ridden track. It is kinda fun but slightly nerve wracking, though I am getting more confident riding them. At the bottom of the stairs we ride past the beach car park and there was a car load of drunken hoons who started yelling a bit of abuse. We ignored them but it was a bit never wracking riding up the road to the forest entrance. The road is quite narrow, dark and twisty, and drunken hoons in cars are not what I want to see on the road when I am riding.

We rode the riverside trail which is getting better and better to ride as I get more familiar with the “trail”. As this is quite un-official riding the riverside trail is probably only ridden by 10 people once a week, it is quite hard to follow as there is no defined trail yet, just markings here and there, but we are getting better and predicting the flow of the trail now. As we were way ahead of where we were the previous week then rode back up the 1.5 of road and back into the forest. I am getting so much better at the road climb, it isn’t at all steep but the more I ride it the further I can get while remaining seated. I am definitely getting stronger! We then rode down the AFL, I have never ridden this track before and man was it fun, my sort of DH, not steep, but pointing down all the way, lots of corners and lots of small jumps. I only did one of the jumps as I do like to scope these out first. Hopefully we will do it again with a bigger crowd and I can follow someone down who knows the jumps and can advise me as we go. Great track ! and a great way to end the ride.

Sunday run

2006-08-28T18:21:00.000+12:00

I watched a bit of the worlds on TV, it is on quite late (by my standards). Last night they had the 4X. It was pretty cool to watch, of course I would have loved to have been there ! But I think on balance I would mush rather have been at SSWC06 in Stockholm, maybe 1 year I can get there.

Miracle of all miracles all the kids were home today which meant that the oldest was around to watch the youngest while I went out for a run. I didn’t take off until 11.30 and drove into town so I could run along the water front. It had been a while since I had run further than 8kms so I wanted to find something fairly flat to start with plus I had bought an arch support for my right shoe and I didn’t want to stray to far from the car. The weather was OK, though there was a reasonable breeze blowing which I hate as it really stuffs up my sinuses. I drove for 6 kms from the start of Ngapipi Rd, which took me most of the way into St Heliers, parked the car and started.

I had a reasonably OK run, I thought I was going fairly slowly as my goal was to keep a low HR, but made it to Ngapipi Rd just about dead on 30 minutes. The run back to car had a bit more of a head wind but again I kept my HR down and completed the 12.4km run in just under an hour. I was pretty happy with that, I felt OK afterwards as well.

If I can keep up a minimum 1 hour run once a week, plus a shorter run during the week then I should maintain a reasonable base for when I decide to train for the marathon.

Saturday ride

2006-08-26T23:50:00.000+12:00

Had an average ride on Saturday, not sure if I am a bit tired but I felt I rode OK, certainly cleaned some sections while remaining fully seated, which I always view as a good sign. But I also rode like a muppet in other sections, washed out tires, dug my front wheel in on a corner and just about went over the bars and failed to make a technical climb I have done dozens of time due to bad line choice.

Rode with my normal riding buddy and a friend of his that hasnt ridden with for a very long time. Last time we rode together he cleaned us out with his power and fitness, though I was pretty confident we were a hell of a lot stronger now.

Rode up the normal Powerball trail then took the back road of Cookie to the water tower and down the Travis trail. I haven’t ridden that track for a while and had a little bit of fun on the small jumps at the end. I am getting more confident getting small amounts of air while riding with the seat right up. We then road Upland, Lightening, Enchanted Forest, Haggis, Northern Exposure, No brakes, Ironhorse – where I did drop my seat and got some air, back through Haggis and the Doris to Slipperies Delight. Slipperies was riding well, I love that trail, it is probably the most technical bit of single track in the park, nothing too complex, a few rooty tight sections with pinch climbs and drops all through it - it is fun to ride. We then rode Tree Huggas, link, by passed Cookie again and did the new section on Raceface down. We were out for 2 half hours and covered quite a bit of ground. Rode at a reasonable pace on average and had a few breaks. We did break the new guy a bit, which is always good !

It is my birthday in a couple of weeks so I will pick myself up a cheap cycle computer as I am quite keen to see how much ground we cover on some of these rides. We are certainly doing a lot more than we used to.

The next event is in 3 weeks time, the Taupo day Night Thriller 12 hour. I have done it 6 times now (maybe 5) once as a solo. I was not going to do it this year but am now in a team of 4 single speeders so it should be fun. Though the track is not really that SS compatible with quite a long grass section that is just hard work on a geared bike, will be a b*stard on the SS.

I watched a bit of the worlds on TV, it is on quite late (by my standards). Lasty night they had the 4X. pretty cool to watch, of course I would have loved to have been there !

Thursday night run

2006-08-25T22:36:00.000+12:00

Had a good run last night, it was quite a cold evening with a fair breeze blowing as well.
I did the 7.9km Godley Rd/Portage Rd/Astley Ave/Taupo/Godley loop.

My aim was to keep the pace down enough that my HR stayed below 160. Normally I find it is quite hard to run slowly enough to keep my Hr down, but last night I managed to do just about the entire loop under 160.

The last 1km back up Godley Rd I kept quite a decent pace on as well. I stopped at the end of my drive and walked back up to the house, by the time I was inside I was not puffing and my HR was close to normal.

I have had a pretty good week of exercise and reasonable diet management, lots of protein. I am hoping that my weight going back up again to 81.5 means it is muscle and not fat. I dont feel fatter.

The SS race is taking shape

2006-08-25T22:15:00.000+12:00

The Race I am organising is starting to take some shape.

I have permission from the bike parks managers to hold the race on Saturday Oct 7 as proposed.

I have a reasonable amount of interest from the local SS community and a small amount from riders from out of town. I would be really happy with 12 riders, but I have 20 on my possibles list.

I have had some people volunteer their time to be ‘dealers’.

The SS Poker rules are taking shape, at least in my head, and I cannot see why it cannot work the way I have planned it, and still be fun for all the competitors.

I now have a prize pack from a small boutique brewery which should allow me to attract a couple more riders. I can also have a beer stop in the event which will provide an extra card for those who partake.

I hope this turns out OK, and that we can have some more social riding events, and hopefully a ‘serious’ SS race later in the year.

MTB World champs

2006-08-25T15:41:00.000+12:00

The MTB World champs are in in NZ right now - this week.

They are on in Rotorua 3 hours drive away. Why am I at work, when some of my riding buddies are they for a week of marshalling, riding, hanging out and having fun.

Why ? - because I am an idiot...

Dodgy Tuesday ride

2006-08-23T15:39:00.000+12:00

I have been having another one of those weeks at work so decided I should sneak out 15 minutes early, try get home before 5.15 and then go for a dodgy Tuesday night Murawai ride. For once it all came together ! I was home on time, got changed into riding gear and had the car loaded before 5.30, which is the cut off time for getting to the ride meeting point to be riding for 6.30.

Had a small group tonight - 2 teenagers and 3 adults, though the weather is not the best, quite a strong wind, the odd light shower and cool enough to be wearing long pants, thermal top, long sleeve shirt and a wind breaker. We rode up the road to the walking track which is a great warm up on the single speed. I had a much better run down the walking track than last time, though I am sure an 8 year old would till beat me, I am just so unconfident when it comes to downhill in the dark – well downhill period I guess. I still need to learn to trust my tyres and relax more. We did not do the gannet colony loop as the wind was so strong so we looped back up the road and into the forest for a run down Dan’s track and then down the riverside track. There was quite a few downed branches and small trees in the forest from all the bad weather over the past couple of days so we stopped to clear the trail a couple of times.
The riverside trail is just so much fun to ride, we are probably the only people who ride it so it is very unclear, quite rough, but a load of fun. We then pedalled our way back to the cars and I went home.

A damn good ride.

It must be very cold at the worlds...

Sunday Woodhill ride...

2006-08-20T20:30:00.000+12:00

A couple of Vorbii were up from Wellington this weekend so a ride had been scheduled for 10.00 AM at Woodhill, there seemed to be quite a bit of interest with some riders coming up from Hamilton as well.

My youngest son was at scout camp so I could go ride Sunday for a change. Wahoo ! As I had been preparing for the race yesterday and did not get to do the full 35km ride I had bit of excess energy today so decided to go to the forest early and meet some of my old Sunday riding crew and ride with them for an hour. Surprisingly everyone was there early so we hit the trail on time, some things have obviously changed since I have been away. The Sunday crew are definitely more into hucking and other freeriding type activities than I am so it was a slow grind up to the Spaghetti trail and then a chat and ride session for 50 minutes through the various jumps and stunts on Spag until I had to shoot back down to the car park to catch the Vorb crew. It was good to ride with the lads again but I could not sustain the slow pace for too many rides. My fitness and ability has improved immensely over the last 1 months and I just like to trail ride as fast as I can for as long as I can.

Met up with a big bunch of Vorbii and guys from the Freeriden shop, probably 20 riders altogether. We left 30 minutes late as expected and started up Powerball, waited and waited at the top and then a couple of us went back down the trail to find the other SSer had broken his chain – just like me yesterday – and did not have the bits to fix it – also like me yesterday ! Luckily some one else had all the required bits and after 15 minutes of shagging around we were back on trail chasing after the big group who had ridden on, we caught them fairly quickly on the big mama trail. We left Big Mama about half way along and shot down SPCA, had a good run down and the out of towners really had a blast. The bunch split at the end of SPCA with some riding the road up to Ironhorse and a bunch taking the longer single track options up Upland, down the Lightening and enchanted forest and through Haggis. At the end of the Haggis we lost a few more riders who took the short option and 2 of us went and rode Northern Exposure and then No Brakes. Finally meeting what was left of the group up at the top of Ironhorse. I dropped my seat for the first time in a while and hammered down Ironhorse clearing most of the jumps. It was great to get some air again and I really enjoyed the run down the track. I was really pushing my time limits to pick up my youngest so a few of us jumped onto the forest road and went back to the start of Link and then rode that and the side of Cookie, whipped down raceface down and I threw the stuff in the car and took off for home.

Had a great ride, was quite wiped out afterwards. Did a bit of chatting but most of the ride was done at a pretty good pace and we covered a bit of ground. Great to see the Wellington and Hamilton crew and to show them our bike park.

N-Duro 3 35km race

2006-08-19T21:00:00.000+12:00

Friday night was nice and quiet, had a wine and then left work on time, traffic was light so I was home quite quickly. Had dinner with the family members that were actually at home and then took youngest son to his scout camp and bought a bottle of Riesling on the way home. My riding buddy turned up at 8.00 to stay the night so we could get away early tomorrow for the race in Rotorua. Had a quiet evening and I went to bed quite early.

Up at 6.00 for a quick breakfast and coffee and on the road by 6.30. Stopped for gas and a proper coffee at a truck stop on the motorway and then took a slow (determined not to get a speeding ticket this time) and steady drive down to Rotorua arriving at 9.30. We unloaded the bikes and sifted up to the registration tent and got our race numbers and then I hung around and chatted to a bunch of friends and other riders, got back to the car in time to get changed, load the pack with food and get my the last minute tasks done and head up to the start line to watch the 70km riders leave.

With the MTB world champs happening in Rotorua next week there were a lot of international riders in town and a few of the team racers were in both the 70 and 35k race today.

30 minutes later a small bunch of us single speeders drifted to the back of the 35km pack and waited for the gun.

I got off to a good start, felt strong, the first bit of climbing is on a sealed road and I stayed at a fairly steady slow pace, but surprisingly was passing people in a fairly steady stream, this continued on for pretty much the entire 20 minute climb, we walked one section that was steep and quite lose, but the rest of the climb I managed to pedal away and was felling pretty OK at the top of the first single track – the lovely downhill Gunna Gotta. I managed a great run down the trail, I passed 1 slow rider before the fun parts and then had a clear run to the end. Picked up another single speeder on the way into the next bit of single track and realised I had another 1 behind me. The 3 of us moved along in convoy at a good pace until we hit the traffic where we were forced to slow down significantly, which was probably a good thing. Cleared the end of A trail, passed the slow people on the road section before tickler and dropped down into the twisty section of tickler down to the stream.

I got about 100 metres into Tickler when BANG – my chain snapped. The quick links exploded. I had no chain breaker and no spare links. I managed to get the chain back together but it was too short and I could not get it around the cogs. Race over. Arse. My first DNF. I was gutted, annoyed that I had links in the car and not in my pack. I took the walk of shame back to the finish line and handed in my race number.

I had a coffee and a feed and hung around chatting to friends until the riders started to come in. Some of the international riders were incredibly fast. The 70k riders were coming in before some of the 35k riders, even riders I consider quite quick. Guess that is why they are at the world champs.

Watched the riders come in over time, one of my SS riding buddies also DNF’d with a damaged wheel, but every one else came in happy but tired. They enjoyed the race, said the course was tough but good and commiserated with my DNF.

We left the site about 2:30 and drove the 3 hours back to Auckland for beer and pizza. 490kms and just under 6 hours of driving, $90 of gas for a 10k 50 minute ride…

At least I had legs for a ride tomorrow.

General update

2006-08-18T07:42:00.000+12:00

The Loaded Hog fun run season started again on Tuesday night. The weather wasn’t too bad, cool and a bit of a breeze that seemed to drop before the run started. There didn’t seem to be as many people as last year, but there were 109 runners so that is not too shabby. I was expecting to do a 23 minute 5km but ended up with a 21:34 which I was more than happy with and came 47th, top half to start the season is pretty good.

Though Tuesday nights are starting to get a bit crowded with the dodgy night ride, Hog runs, Adidas have a run on Tuesdays with 3 distance options, and there is now a spin class in a hall in Titirangi, which looks fun. Will try and do the dodgy night ride next week if I can.

The bike is pretty much ready for the race this weekend, will tweak one of the wheels either tonight or when I get there tomorrow morning. I was going to swap the cleats in my shoes but I cannot one of them out so will run with the old cleats, or maybe swap shoes to the Nikes, which don’t fit as well but do have new cleats plus a better sole for walking, and there is going to be some walking in this race. The course has 2 big climbs, neither of which I have ridden all the way to the top of before, but then I have done one of them in a race situation either.

I am expecting some of the riders from the world champs to be racing as well, as the worlds are next week, it would be great to be in a race with a world champ. Must remember to take the camera.

The social race is taking shape, just waiting on clearance to hold it at Woodhill at it will be on. Have had more interest than I thought with a few emails from some absolute strangers…

The SSWC06 is on this weekend – one year I would love to attend this, sounds like a blast.

Bike maintenance

2006-08-15T13:43:00.000+12:00

I must admit I suck at maintaining my bike. I can do the basics, but I do not have the tools to do the bigger jobs and well I am just not that good. One of the great things about the single speed is there is just so little to go wrong. I have taken this to a bit of an extreme and have got a bit slack at cleaning and lubing – though I do look after the chain.

Last night I went around to visit my buddy - he is an awesome bike mechanic, to get one of those once every few years jobs done which was replacing the BB. He installed a new, though, cheap bottom bracket in the DMR. I was given a Raceface BB with flogged bearings, which I will still use one day, but in this instance it was cheaper to buy a new BB.

Also replaced the chain, I did not get a test ride in so tonight I go for a quick zap around the block and make sure everything works, adjust the brakes and lube the chain. Tomorrow night I will try and get a longer short ride in to stretch the chain a bit and get the cranks going so I can make final adjustments before the 35km race on Saturday.

Final gym session

2006-08-14T08:02:00.000+12:00

Got up at 5.35 and went to the gum for my final free session.

Had a good spin and did a few of the weight machines. I think I am stronger than when I started, I sure hope so. I managed 12 out of 14 days, had 2 Sunday lie ins.

At least tomorrow I can stay in bed until 6:30... Yahoo.

Nice and quiet at work this morning, so listening to some Clutch

Riverhead trail digging

2006-08-12T20:00:00.000+12:00

Friday I registered for the 35km leg of the N-Duro Marathon race. I will do it on the SS but I believe I am going to be broken at the end. There are 2 good climbs, neither of which I have ever completed on the bike. There is also some nice single track with the inclusion of Hot X buns this year as well as Be rude not to which is still one of my favourite Rotorua trails, even though I am always half broken when I get there.

The MTB world champs are in Rotorua the week after the race, with the race being the first event in a week of MTB stuff happening in town. I really wish I had got my shit together and organised to go down for a few days. I know so many people taking the week off and volunteering during the week day events for free entry in to the big weekend.

I had a good morning at the gym, got a decent ride and some weights in, it is my second to last free day and I don’t think I will join.

After the gym I went straight to Riverhead forest for a trail scoping exercise with James to try and find an old trail to be cleared as part of designing a course for the last round of the Auckland champs in December. Riverhead is a commercial pine forest that has been half felled. The area we are looking at was felled about 2 years ago and 10 ft pines are starting to grow. Unfortunately the gorse has been rampant and it is incredibly thick and well over 6 feet tall in places.

Riverhead has long been an Auckland mountain biking institution though there have been access issues over the past few years with the previous forestry company. The new owners have yet to decide on what access they will allow the various interested parties and where and how they will allocate access, so we are all being cautious and following the basic trail building rules.

He was looking for a ‘trail’ that he had seen from overhead photos, the aim was to scope the trail and see where it ends, clear the worst of the gorse so that a trail cutting crew can go through on Sunday with scrub cutters to start cleaning the mess.

The weather was not the best for scoping at Riverhead, or in fact for doing anything at Riverhead. It rained on the way up to the forest but luckily it did not rain while we there. We walked up one track clearing some of the worse old gorse until we hit the top and then climbed the road to the top of Pattersons. There was an old fire trail off to the right that had been widened into a full forestry road and at the top of that an old bit of single track headed off down the ridge. We cleared the entry into the trail with the loppers and opened up the first 20 ft or so before heading down the trail clearing the worst of the old hard gorse as we went, leaving enough space to walk down without getting too scratched. The track was fairly greasy and in parts was over 6 inches deep in muddy water, there will be quite a bit of drainage work needed as well to prevent large ruts forming before the race. We realised time was moving away from us so really started to only clear the really thick stuff that would prevent a larger gang from seeing the track. About half way down the gorse cleared a bit and we had a good run to the end of the trail, before walking back to the car.

There is going to be a lot of work needed to complete the trail before any racing can be done it, gorse and cutty grass needs to be completely pushed back, otherwise it will grow over the trail again, the major ruts need to be taken out and some decent drainage put in. It will be a fun trail when it is finished though and is another option in quite big loop.

No cable - no ride !

2006-08-09T11:17:00.000+12:00

I left work early to rush home to get the car back from the shop, it did not cost too much to get the electric window repaired, but any money spent on the car is money wasted.

Made it home by just after 5 which was enough time to get changed, load the car with bike and bike stuff, ram some bread into my mouth and hit the road to get to Murawai for a sifty illegal Tuesday night ride by 6.30 PM.

I managed the get changed bit, the start to load the car bit, before realising I did not have the bit of cable that goes between light and battery. It got left with someone at the Woodhill 12 hour. Shit bicks, unloaded car, got unchanged and sat in the lounge.

I did go round to a mates place to talk about replacing bearings in the new old BB I was given. I will check out bearing prices on Wednesday, but it could be cheaper to buy a new BB.

I have had 3 good gym sessions so far this week, getting the intensity level up, it is feeling just right now, mixing the bike one day with a run the next. 4 more days of free gym to go.

SS Poker race

2006-08-07T21:41:00.000+12:00

Had a day off from the gym yesterday, just didn’t get around to going in the morning and then I had the youngest and his cousin for the day so couldn’t go till my wife got home from work at 7.00 and then it was dinner and then yada yada.

I did get up at 5.30 this morning though and got in a reasonable session before work. With the car off the road until I get the window repaired tomorrow I did not want to take it to work so caged a lift of an old colleague and caught the bus home. The bus ride was OK, not too crowded and relatively quick, took an hour but that is tolerable. Will be bussing in and out again tomorrow, as well. Thank God for MP3 players though !

I have decided to organise a single speed race at Woodhill. I have posted on a couple of forums and emailed a few single speeders to see if there is any interest. If I can get 10 definite starters it will be on. Tentative date is Oct 7.

Going to be based loosely on Bike Poker. There has been some reasonable interest so far, including a few people who are happy to help out with the event.

A good rainy ride

2006-08-05T16:07:00.000+12:00

The gym has been going well, 5 days in a row and lifting the effort each day by a tiny amount. I still wonder if I am whimping out a bit though with the weights, but I am happy with what I am doing. I even went this morning before mountain biking.

The drivers side electric window in my car has broken, unfortunately it is in the full down position and for the first time in weeks it is raining solidly. Luckily I got a ride to the forest today otherwise I would have been unable to ride.

The plan for the ride today was to do a fire road loop and get some consistent hill work in – though the hills are not big, high, steep or long. With the rain and wind we decided to go straight into the forest. Rode Powerball, Spaghetti to the start of Afterglow, quick break there to take the rain coat off then a fast zap down Afterglow and the down Tortellini to the car park. Over the road and up Upland straight down the Lightening and Enchanted forest and brief break at the start of Haggis. Kept riding at a reasonable pace and was aiming to stop as little as possible. Haggis was great, cleaned that again without getting out of the seat, then the same on Northern exposure. Had a quick 5 at the start of my track and then rode up that, again sitting down for as much as possible. Had to stop in the middle a shortcut line had started to appear that cut a good 250 metres out of the track. I closed it off with logs and trail trash as best I could and we rode on. I guess one of the good things about people putting short cuts in a track means that it is a challenge to ride and they have failed to meet the challenge, which makes those who meet the challenge are the better for it. Shit the track ain’t that tough, I can ride the whole thing on the SS and I am not that good a rider. We rode the first section of Ironhorse then dropped out and finished Conifer loop and Haggis the rode the road back to the start of Raceface down and back to the carpark.

Fitness wise, I rode extremely well today, I felt good, kept a reasonable pace up, rode as much as I could sitting down. I am not sure of I was going to quickly or the conditions were a bit slippery, but I felt like I was riding like a muppet, washed out the front wheel, slipped on wet roots, Pity I cannot get skill and fitness all together in the same ride…

I have decide to do the 35km N-duro race in Rotorua in 2 weeks, will do it on the SS and it s going to be the longest SS ride I have done.

Listening to the Misfits this morning, I never really liked them that much but have borrowed a bunch of CD’s from a friend to see if my tastes have changed at all. They are still only OK.

2nd day at the gym

2006-08-02T08:40:00.000+12:00

Hit the gym again this morning, got there 10 minutes earlier than yesterday at 5.45 AM but had a better idea of what to do so did not feel so stupid standing there staring vacantly at the machines. Jumped straight on to the bike and did the hill climb ride again for 30 minutes. Slightly higher level this time, and the one I will stick to for the next few days. Though tomorrow I may run instead to break up the training a bit. I followed that up with 8 minutes on the rowing machine, I wanted to do 2km but on this particular machine I could not work out how to change the view to show distance. I feel so stupid.

I did get to use some more of the weight machines today, there were more people there so I could sneakily watch how they used them and then follow. I did get stuck on one ugly piece of machinery that I gave up on. I now have 3 leg exercises sorted and 1 upper body pull down thing.

I appear to be really weak compared to other gym users as I cannot shift some of the weights the machines are set to.

Listening to some Skatalites this morning. Oh Yeah – the music at the gym sucks terribly.

12 Hours of Woodhill

2006-08-01T13:25:00.000+12:00

I have been looking forward to this event since the team was called together. We have a 4 person SS team entered in the 4/5 person open team category. I have ridden with all the riders before, 2 at the Moonride 24 hour in May and 1 from N-Duro 24 hour in Feb. I am the only local which makes it all that much cooler. I have team leader and his wife staying at my place for the weekend which is cool, nice to be able to assist out of town racers for a change. We are all Vorbers... We are racing as Essence Bicycles Singole Velocita and now have matching shirts so really look the part. Though of course we are all riding different bikes.

Saturday morning dawned extremely foggy, though the forecast was good. Team leader went directly to the site where the other guys plus a couple of other Vorb related teams had set up and camped overnight. I went into town to pick up another out of town Vorber was racing 6 hour solo women. The 50 minute drive out to Woodhill saw the fog dissipate and nice clear sky come through for by the time we arrived at 9.00 AM. We left the car at the top car park and I took 2 trips to hump all my crap down to the site, man I am a heavy packer…

The main site

By the 10:30 race start, the bike had been tweaked, though I had horrid noises coming from the BB, I had sifted around and said hello to numerous riders I knew and had a good cup of coffee from the on-site cart. I felt for the organisers as sod all people turned out for the event. I am not sure of exact numbers yet but expect less than 1 third of the maximum was there. Really disappointing as there are around 3500 riders in Auckland more could have turned out to race. At least the traffic in the forest would not be too bad.

Our site

For a change I was not the lead rider, team leader took that honour which was great as it started with a 500 metre run to the bikes. Our plan was to take this event at a gentle pace and have fun and aim to not come last. Team leader came out of the forest 8.5kms and 28 minutes later in 7th place !

Team leader on the trail

which sent number 2 rider off at a charge. I took a couple of photos at the end of the single track and there was a steep sandy descent that was screwing people up on the first lap. It was going to be fun later in the day when it got really carved up. Team leader and No 2, both looked pretty broken and when it was my turn to go out I determined to take a slow ride up the hill and conserve energy for the rest of the lap, I also had a reasonable idea of the course and knew areas where I could gain an advantage on other riders if I had the grunt left in my legs.

A broken rider 2

The lap started with a 200 metre ride up and metal road and into the single track, going up Raceface Down the wrong way, turning off and down a narrow wooden bridge to the new section of trail we dug a few weeks back, the trail meandered up the hill with a couple of tiny pinch climbs but mostly doable seated. We then went over the road into stage 1 of Big Mama, then down into a tiny section of Cry Baby, popping back out onto the unsealed road and then back into Cray Baby and down all off Cookie. I nailed it in Cookie, patience on the climb meant I had plenty for this slightly uphill but wide, twisty single track. At the top off Cookie we crossed back into Spaghetti into one of my favourite sections of really twisty, slightly rooty single track, perfect for SS, couple of small jumps and some ride-alongs. I was starting to pass people from the end of No 2’s lap and aimed to nail all the slow ones before the tight decent as that was gong to be one of the fun parts of the track, fortunately no one held me up on that and I popped out at the bottom of Granny Hill. This was a bit of a grind – didn’t really need granny, I expected this to go through to the tent site, but it popped back into the forest again for another 500 metres of single track, then out and down the steep sandy descent, up a short climb then out into the tents, and a 29 minute lap done. I was happy…

Lap change Over

No 4 went out for his lap and we were all settled down relaxing when 17 minutes later he came running back into the site pushing his bike with the chain dragging on the ground. We quickly sent rider no 1 back out while rider 4 lay collapsed in a fetid heap on the ground. His tensioner gave up half way into the forest…

My BB was making really awful grinding noises so too fix that I put the MP3 player in my pocket and turned the punk rock up loud…

My next lap came around all too quickly, so I cranked up the volume and took a nice slow ride up the first climb, passed a group of 5 solos just before hitting the single track and had a fairly steady climb, surprisingly I passed a few people on the way up. I held off a guy behind me most the way through the top single track though he finally got me just before the top of the Cookie trail, I kept him well in site as we worked through the next couple of kms, pushing the pace a bit to try and pass as many of the slower riders as I could before the tight decent – mainly because it is way more fun at speed. I got behind the guy who passed me just as we hit the steepest section and he went sideways off the side of the track allowing me to shoot past and down to the bottom of Granny Hill. I kept a fairly static pace up the climb, passing a few walkers !!! (this early in the race) on the way up, then down through the last section of forest and back to the tent site. 30 minute lap. I thought I was faster than the first but had dropped a minute.

At this point in the race we were 1st out of 20 in our category of open 4/5 person team – this actually showed how bad the field was as we would normally expect to come around half way through the field. Especially as we were on single speeds. Though we did realise we had 17 minute lap when we were averaging 29 minutes. We went and told the organisers so they could pull the lap from our results, which would add to the challenge, but this still left us in 3rd place.

In between laps I had a quick feed of some homemade chicken pasta, a couple of bars and a lot of water, it was quite warm considering it is still winter, I was in a short sleeve riding shirt and still sweating.

Lap 3 I started out slowly again, aiming to pace myself for the expected 6 laps and allow plenty of room to hammer the top trails. The field was quite spread out so I did not really see anyone on the road climb and passed a group of 5 slow riders in the forest section of the climb. The top section passed by in a blur of old school punk rock and I was soon passing the odd slow rider prior to hitting the descent again. Got most of the way down the descent, till the steep sandy section where 2 riders had got themselves a bit tangled up , 1 managed to clear himself off to the side and the other started to tripod his way down before running off the side of the track, I don’t think I had to slow down at all and I am wondering if I scared them off a bit… Got to grant hill, took the right hand line and it was so much smoother than the left, managed to get most of the way up sitting down. Saw a group of riders ahead that were struggling a bit and knew I had to pass them before the next downhill section as they would be too slow and would ruin the enjoyment of riding down hills. I managed to catch them before the single track but could not pass them before the descent. I picked off 1 on a bit of single track and as we approached the final steepish and very sandy section I saw a new line had been made high up on the left bank, I shot up their past 2 of the slow people, hopefully not cutting them off as I got back onto the main line. The last 2 held me up on the final very short ascent, I was going so slowly I had to struggle to maintain balance – so much harder on a single speed. Into tent city and off the bike in 31 minutes. Dropping a minute a lap – damn. I thought that last run was good.

When I got back to our site I had a few missed calls on my mobile, including 1 from my wife. After calling her I ended up having to go home half way through the event for a family situation – fortunately not as serious as it could have been. Luckily there was a friend lurking about with his SS looking for a ride so he stepped into my place in the team and did my remaining 3 laps. Bummer of a way to end what was a good morning and should have been a good evening.

Apparently the rest of the event went well, the weather stayed good and lap times dropped a little bit as night set in and the course got a bit cut up in places.

Next event for me could be the 35km N-duro race in 4 weeks, will do it on the SS if I can get the BB replaced in time.

The gym

2006-08-01T08:00:00.000+12:00

I have never been one for gym's, I would rather be out on the street in the 'fresh' air than stuck inside an air-conditioned room listening to loud music, but my youngest son's school has a fundraiser supplied by the local gym so off I went.

Every time you go to the gym in a 2 week period from the day you sign up the gym donate a whole 1$ to the school for sporting equipment. It is free to use the gym for that period. Now 1$ is not much but it is worth supporting, and 2 weeks worth of free gym is exactly what I need right now to kick training along.

I am thinking about doing the 35km N-Duro 3 race in 4 weeks on the single speed, it will be a tough event for me so anything I can do to build some leg strength for the hills will be all good.

I aim to go to the gym at 6.00 AM evyer day for 2 weeks, donate an entire $14 to the school and get some base in.

Hopefully if I can achieve that then once the free 2 weeks has finished I will be motivated enough to get out and run first thing in the morning. I just do not like road riding in the dark, especially at that time of day when drivers are going a bit faster and are a bit less focused.

I did my first session this morning, 30 minutes on the bike thing, with a nice climb program, 1km on the rower and a couple of weighty type things. As this is a free session I did not have a program and as I have been to a gym in 5 years or so I had very little knowledge about how the equipment worked. Will work out some more tomorrow. The musix was crap and too loud - louder than my mp3 player, arse.

I am happy !

2006-07-30T19:53:00.000+12:00

Updated DMR

2006-07-30T10:14:00.000+12:00

Finally got the DMR all ready for the race yesteday.

The front mechanical disk installed and the cranks on and running.

The seat is not at a weird angle - honest...

Really need a new BB as it is making some awful noises.

Afternoon off work ride

2006-07-27T20:47:00.000+12:00

Our illustrious team leader of the single speed team for the 12 hour event this weekend has come up to Auckland early and I volunteered to take the afternoon off work and show him the pleasures of Woodhill mountain bike park.

The weather was not bad for a ride, little bit cloudy and a little bit cool, but certainly a good winter’s afternoon. The park was pretty empty as you would expect mid-week, though the event organisers were there taping up the course.

We started riding up the road towards the trail block but saw that the event trail was being marked out next to the road so jumped the fence and started up the hill, the climb was not bad and well suited for a single speed, gentle climbs for a 100 meters then flatting out and then climbing again, climb was probably a km all up, with over half of it on single track, some on the new trail we had been digging – with some nice rooty bits to keep it honest – though it was an all skill level event. At the top of the hill we had to guess which way the trail went (and I think we guessed wrong) and we headed down the spaghetti trail, this was a great section for racing as it is quite flowy, some nice turns, some rooty corners but plenty of room for passing. About ¾ of the way through Spag stage 1 there was a newly dug and very narrow descent back which aimed back to the carpark, we shot down there to the bottom and then cut into the end of Charlies Angels and pushed up the hill back to Spag and off the event course. Had a flier down SPCA , so much fun and then took the road up to and I showed my guest Northern Exposure and my trail, then down Python, end of Haggis, Enchanted Forest the wrong way, up Link to Cookie. The Cookie trail was marked off for the event which was really pleasing as it is hard packed fairly fast trail with a couple of small jumps, plenty of passing room and I can do it in my sleep at reasonable pace. We picked up another SSer who I had never met before, who was young and fast, so we chatted to him for a while and he followed us back down Raceface Down to the carpark.

Nice ride, good last minute preparation for the race on Saturday. The bike rode well with its new cranks and brakes. Few minor adjustments to the rear brake, a re-tighten off the cranks and she will be ready for the race.

I would so much rather be riding than working.

New old cranks

2006-07-26T21:12:00.000+12:00

Well the cranks arrived at work today so I had them on the bike about 15 minutes after I got home, got the XC SPD’s screwed in, ripped open the little chain bit I bought to replace the quick links I lost and bugger it - the guy in the shop gave me a link that was too small. I told him it was for a SS chain… so no test ride tonight.

But I did pump the shocks, pump the tyres, adjust the hand grips and brake levers so it was not a complete dead loss.

Race in 3 days…

Loaded the old 256mb MP3 player with 256mb of punk rock…

Yay for Vorb

2006-07-24T10:41:00.000+12:00

Just secured some second hand cranks off a fellow Vorbii for an extremely good price, event better he is going to courier them to me today and I will pay him at the weekend when he is up for the Woodhill 12 hour event.

I love Vorb ! and its network of extremly cool mountain bikers.

Bugger bugger bugger !

2006-07-23T21:23:00.000+12:00

In preparation for the team 12 hour event I am doing next Saturday I pulled the SS to bits and gave her a good old clean. I haven’t even had the rear wheel off since the race in May, and cleaning has been more of a wave the hose over the worst of the dirt since then as well.

As well as cleaning and lubing the bike I intended on swapping the platform SPD pedals for the XC spuds, as well fitting the front disk brakes with new pads and putting new cleats on the Nike shoes.

So yesterday afternoon I took the wheels, pedals and chain off and gave her a good clean. gentle brush, rag, toothbrush for the nooks and crannies. She was looking pretty clean by the end of it.

Today after everything had dried off I started to reassemble, first the chain, wiped it down after it had dried off and found I must have dropped the quick lines into the soapy water bowl with the chain. Sadly I threw the dirty water into the weed patch behind the shed yesterday afternoon, quick links – long gone…. OK, I thought, not a biggie I can pick up some more Monday, I will just get the chain back on and carry on assembling and getting things ready.

Next up pedals. Hmmmmm next issue – the crank was pretty old and had already been stripped once and had an insert put in, this was also pretty much wrecked and I could not get the pedal in… Shit. OK, I will swap the cranks from the Cindercone, rang a friend and drove round to get his crank puller. Pulled the square splined crank from the SS and then found the Cindercone had a isis crank. Shit shit shit. Time for a new plan…

Well I go the brake pads changed successfully anyway…

Now I need to find cranks or arrange to swap the BB and cranks between bikes by Thursday when I go riding before the race on Saturday.

I should have stayed in bed.

Saturday morning Woodhill ride

2006-07-23T14:03:00.000+12:00

Had a good ride today, went out with my normal riding buddy for a SS thrash at Woodhill.

It was very cool this morning, around 3 degrees, but it was another crystal clear day so riding was going to be good.

We road up the new PowerBall trail to Spaghetti along Spag to SPCA. SPCA was riding so nicely, 1 or so Km’s of gentle downhill a fun fun ride. Wicked.

We pushed up the hill from the end of SPCA through the old car park and then up Upland, I struggled a bit on the climb which was unusual, shot down Lightening and Enchanted Forest to the Haggis. We were riding at a cracking pace and by the time we were halfway up Haggis I was really sucking air, definitely not as good as last weeks ride. This week we rode all of Haggis and did not cut out to Conifer loop and up to my trail. I so rarely do the full Haggis loop which is a shame as it is a neat trail and the back section that we miss is 1 of the older sections of track in the park. After Haggis we rode Slipperies delight and the climb at the end, even though it is not big damn near killed me, really was feeling the ride this week. Tree Huggers was next and then up the Link where my riding buddy slayed me on the climb and left me a wheezing struggling mess by the top, I killed him last week so it was definitely his turn. We then rode the side of Cookie and down into the new section of trail back to the carpark as I wanted to bed the trail into my head before the race next weekend as the new trails are supposed to be in it.

Not a bad ride, definitely not as good as last week though.

I did ride with the HRM and hit 100% at times, sustained 101 going up Upland, so will definitely adjust that a bit. Set max heart rate from 179 to 187 and see if I go over that at 100%

Spinning

2006-07-20T14:15:00.000+12:00

Still spinning, had 2 more sessions on the bike this week. Monday night for about 30 monutes before I was interupted by a visitor and then last night I got a good 45 minutes in at a decent pace.

Hope to get back on the bike again tonight and give it a good nudge, just had a massive lunch with the old work crew so need to get ride of those fries. Then a gentle spin Friday night before Saturday mornings ride.

Sadly my bro-in-law wants the trainer back after the race next weekend so that is a bit of a bummer -gues I could buy my own ?

Hope to put the disk brakes on the DMR tonight as well, that will be the first job I do when I get home.

Tuesday night in Area 51

2006-07-19T13:54:00.000+12:00

I had a really good ride last night. I hooked up with some people from the Freeride’n store and hit some ‘illegal’ trails up at Area 51. I do not normally condone illegal trail riding, but in this case most of these trails are in a publicly accessible forest, and there used to bike trails all through this section of the forest, untill things all got a bit commercial – enough said trying to justify myself, I really shouldn’t have been riding there anyway, but I did and I probably will again.

There was 7 of us riding, 3 groms and 4 adults. I took the SS though I wasn’t sure what the climbing would be like and from experience of riding there in the past when it was allowed I did expect to have to walk some sections.

We met at 6.30 PM at the home of one of the rider leader and then pedalled for a KM or so up the road to a downhill walking track. The track was fun, though I am always a bit nervous riding downhill trail for the first time in the dark, especially when it is A) designed for walkers and may have steps and B) I suspected it was close to the edge of a cliff. It was a nice wide trail and pretty tame, be a lot more fun next time. At the bottom of the track we rode some more sealed road the hill to the gannet colony track. I haven’t been there for a while and was surprised that after a 100 meters of gentle climb to the top the track had been stepped all the way back down to the bottom car park. The steps were in sets of 4 with about 4 metres of flat between them, there was probably 10 sets of steps down which was the longest run of steps I have done, enjoyed it, though I will say I was a bit worried about blowing the rear tube as I was running very low pressures from riding in the sand and was not expecting to be riding more wooden framed steps.

After the steps we rode back up the road and into the forest itself, having a bit of local knowledge certainly helped as I have always gone in from the bottom road which has meant a steep climb/push to the top, but we snuck around the easy gradient sealed road and in the back way almost at the top. There has been an awful lot of trail work in this end of the forest, seeing as we are not supposed to be riding there a lot of effort had gone into developing some gnarly short downhill tracks with some quite carefully constructed jumps, including road gaps. We did not do anything that serious and soon dropped back to sea level and rode some very vague tight twisting shingle track back to the beach road and then back to the cars.

All up it was a 2 hour ride, damn good fun as all rides are, cool to ride with some different people and some different trails and not take any of it too seriously. I will definitely be back for some Tuesday night rides.

Listening to some old "shoegazer" bands - Chapterhouse and My bloody valentine today.

hmmm - 107% of max Heart Rate

2006-07-16T21:52:00.000+12:00

A stunning late winter day today. Crystal clear blue skies, gentle but cool breeze, so I stayed in bed till 9.30 then went round to briefly visit my parents before they went on their 5 week trip to the UK.

I picked up the DMR from the bike shop after having the BB re-greased, the mechanic says the BB is just about totally shot – it is 6 years old so fair enough, but I want it to last a few more weeks until I can get the cash to buy another one. This week I am buying some almost new Shimano pedals and cleats from a fellow Vorber so need the cash.

Started installing the front mechanical disk brake but found the outer cable I had was not long enough so used what I had and got the rim brakes running sweetly for this weeks riding and will have another go at the weekend.

Went for a run up Exhibition drive. My plan was to do a fast lap then a slow lap. At the halfway point on the first lap I was hitting a reasonable pace and then realised had not set my damn watch, I tried keeping up the pace on the way back, but had really lost the motivation to push for a record time. So basically gave up, dropped the pace to slow and jogged back.

About 1km from the car I put on a good burst to see how far I could push the heart rate over 100% got up to 107 at 189 bpm. I will change the HRM to reflect the higher heart rate as I do worry that even on an average run I spend too much time over 85% of max.

Mechanical disk brakes.

2006-07-16T21:12:00.000+12:00

I have been thinking about buying some second hand mechanical disk brakes for the DMR for quite a while and have been keeping a casual eye on a couple of forums and the trademe web site.

Finally someone on Vorb posted their old Shimano mech. disks for sale and I leapt in and accepted his price of $50. To make this the coolest thing the seller said he would gift them to me for all the work I have been doing track building.

In return I gave the $50 to Vorb and became a foundation member.

We were all winners.

Here are the brakes, I went to put them on the DMR today but the outer cable I had lying around was too short, will get some fresh cable tomorrow and have a crack tomorrow night.

A good ride

2006-07-15T21:40:00.000+12:00

Had a pretty good ride at Woodhill today. Rode with a friend who was on his fairly new GT single speed, and on his second ride after knee problems. The weather was not too bad, cloudy and cool but no rain.

Unusually we rode up the road to the start of the Big Mama track and then dropped in for the first half of Big Mama. I was riding Ok, we rode up the Big Mama hill and I was feeling pretty good at the top which was way better than last time I rode it. Sadly the top 2 jumps, which I have always felt comfortable doing, have been changed.

Historically Woodhill has had most of the smaller, and even some of the bigger jumps, with flat landings, bad design in an era of ignorance. But they have been like that for an awful long time and while some don’t like them I was used to them and it meant that I could hit them at a speed that suited me, slowly ! Now they have been rebuilt with wooden framed landings and I am sure if I hit them I would case the landing and trash my rear wheel. Which means I do not jump much any more as there are not too many jumps that do not have newly built landings. This pisses me off a bit as I did enjoy doing the jumps I did in the way I did them… oh well, back to the ride.

We dropped down the last section of Spaghetti to the old car park and then did more road work up to the start of Haggis. I had a great ride up Haggis, I really hit the groove on that track, first time I have ridden the whole first section fully seated, I do believe that some of the trainer work and the session at Rotorua has built a bit of grinding strength. We then did Northern Exposure and then hit my trail again. The new section is bedding in well though there was one bend that just does not flow for me, I have gone over the side both times I have ridden it, so I will take a spade up and widen and berm it. We the rode down Ironhorse which I have not done in its entirety for ages and then back up Anaconda, felt good on that trail as well which was a first.

Back up the side of Conifer and Haggis then up the combo trail which was a bit of a grind and then down through the new trail which has bedded in well. This section of trail is in the race in 2 weeks so I will ride it again next week and get the layout firmly bedded in my mind.

All up a really good ride, things glowed well though my rear brakes need a serious adjustment and the BB was squeaking like mad. I dropped the bike in to the LBS and they said they would do re-grease and pack the BB ready for me to pick up tomorrow.

Woot woot - The Buzzcocks are coming to town

2006-07-14T21:13:00.000+12:00

Just read in the paper today - The Buzzcocks are playing a gig on September 10th at the Saint James Theatre in Auckland.

I am very excited. My favourite band of all time, though I have never seen them, they played in Auckland once in the 90s but I was out of time on a family holiday and couldn't go.

Yes they are old, and yes they have released a new album that is probably awful, though I will purchase it, but they will play old stuff.

Yahoooooooo

Spin spin spin

2006-07-14T20:59:00.000+12:00

Had 2 good rides on the trainer this week.

Wednesday night I did a good hour long session, worked up a massive sweat even though the tempreture was below 10 degrees. good mix of spin and digging it in.

Spent the hour listening to Dead Kennedys "Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables" LP followed by some Clutch as that was the next CD in the stacker.

Thursday night I did a 40 minute light spin, watched an episode of Prison Break to keep me amused. So far I have not been bored on the spinner ! Will aim for a 2 hour session one night next week.

The 12 hour race is 2 weekends away. team of SSer's - I am looking forward to to it.

Listening to the Buzzcocks - Singles going steady

Today's run

2006-07-09T21:09:00.000+12:00

Had a quick road run this afternoon. 10km 56 minutes.

Did the Titirangi Rd loop, not the best time, but I felt very flat for most of the run and there was quite a strong head wind up Titirangi Rd. Still it was nice to run again and to follow up yesterdays ride with a run.

World cup final tomorrow morning so up early. England did not make it again, out on penalties as usual...

Listening to Built to Spill after a good write up in the paper.