a new personal record

well ... i think i've always been a morning person and am certainly not adverse to early morning bike rides ... but this past saturday i set a new record though ... on the bike at 5.15am ... i wanted to be back home to be able to attend a few house inspections (as we are 'moving house' as they call it here) ... pretty good feeling arriving home at 10.00am having 153k in the bank. it was a clear morning ... great watching the sunrise riding along the bay with no traffic, bike or car. awesome.

shepparton half ironman in 12 days. my training mates are doing ironman western oz in 5 days ... summer is on the way!

grampians

lynn treated me to a ironman-training-free weekend away to grampians national park for my birthday. its a great spot (... except for some of the unsealed roads that our rental car didn't appreciate ...).

a major bush fire went through the grampians in january of this year and it took out a huge chunk of the park's forest (~45%) ...

here are some pictures. hope you enjoy.

lynn speeding through the mountains.


lookout over mt difficult range.


lynn with tough-girl look.


post-fire growth.


me + waterfall.


double thumbs up from lynn on they way up mt stapylton.


rock ducky.


view down to mt zero.


me on the edge. mt stapylton.

run like the wind

this happened about a month ago. my friend suzanne took this picture of me near the finish on St. Kilda road in Melbourne. thanks to a very serious tailwind, i managed to match my half marathon PB (81.5 minutes) after laying low from training for the 2-3 weeks prior.

back on the wagon now ... tentative but probable race schedule is as follows:

10 dec - shepparton half ironman
14 jan - tasmanian half ironman
27 jan - bloody big swim (?)
18 feb - surfcoast long course tri (relay with lynn?)
01 apr - ironman oz

mango

who knew that it would take me 30+ years to discover mango ... do mangos even make it as far as cobourg, ontario?

i had never heard of them (well, i had, but it never stuck on my very local radar) until eating at 'curry in a hurry' in guelph (ca 1996), where i tasted lynn's mango juice. hated it. never tried it again until we ate them at lynn's uncle's place in sydney last year. i was indifferent at that time.

on sunday, i cut my first mango. today, my second, and i did a pretty lousy job. i have the stains on my sock and pants to prove it. it's not as easy as people make it look.

more importantly, it's now my new favourite fruit. yumm.