In the ultimate display of geekiness ...

Here is a plot of times people recorded in the Taupo Half Ironman in 2004 compared against the times they (assuming there aren't 2 seperate people having the same name each doing one of the races ...) recorded in the full Ironman 2.5 months later.



Basically, it looks like, for these 2 races, full ironman time is approximately 2.2 times the half ironman time, which puts me just over 10 hours. That's an AVERAGE of course.

Hot, Hot, Hot

It's bloody hot here. Yesterday, they were calling for 33 degrees. Somehow, it made it up over 40 (Bureau of Meteorology is HOPELESS here!). They even had to invoke the "stadium-under-cover" rule at the Australian Open and suspend play on those courts not under cover.

For myself, it made for a struggle finishing off Portsea ride #2 (3 to go!) as the hot weather is generally accompanied by a strong northerly wind (or more like the hot weather is a result of the northerly). I went for my long run at 5.45am and at 6.10am, I passed a posted temperature of 27 degrees. Fairly comfortable, but wouldn't have wanted to start much later.

It's funny to see how many people are at work today to avoid the heat. Or maybe there are always this many people working weekends ... I'm rarely ever here.

Long day in the saddle.

Well, in the ramp up to Ironman, Aussies - as they do - do some overdistance rides. I've done some long rides before, but NOTHING like this. I happened to leave my heart rate monitor at work so I added an extra 4-5k to go pick that up before leaving for the ride. Left my house at 5.50am, returned at about 1.30pm ... and today was a good day with favourable winds ... door to door *219k* ... no, that is not a typo -- two hundred nineteen. Crikey, I am TIRED.

Thankfully, we had a good group out ... anywhere from 6 to 16, depending on where we were ... so there was ample opportunity to sit in the bunch.

5 more long rides to go before Taupo.

In case you're interested, click this link. North Melbourne to Portsea and back. It's the status quo for Ironman training rides here.

Do we need a "how to be australian and live to tell about it" handbook?

It seems like you can't go a week or two in Australia without hearing about stories of someone dying from a shark attack or jellyfish or getting swept off some rocks, not to mention the number of people killed in car accidents.

For example, here are some recent stories:

No sign of shark pack after Qld death

Swimmer's 'shark' scream ignored as joke

Lifesavers sound warning after jellyfish death

And, especially for us who didn't grow up living with such natural "crisis waiting to happen" areas (well, bears maybe? but not in southern Ontario), there should really be a manual describing where you should and shouldn't go. I mean, what's up with Australia? New Zealand has none of these poisonous snakes and spiders that Oz has ...

Just a thought.

Sydney fireworks !

As some of you may know, Lynn and I visited Lynn's Uncle in Sydney this past weekend. A great way to spend New Year's Eve (i.e. with ~1 million other people for the fireworks) plus a couple days hanging out in and around Sydney ...

Here is a link to a ~1 minute video taken from just a few metres away from the Opera House, looking towards the Harbour Bridge. Might be best to right click the link and save it somewhere and enlarge it a bit ... you can see that beating heart, which is at the middle of the bridge ... then, about 15 seconds into the video a series of lights approach the middle, then some fireworks ... and at this point, you can actually see the outline of the bridge ... not an amazing video by any means, but thought it might be entertaining to some. Careful, it's 7 Mebabytes ... not advisable if yer on dial-up.