An interesting thing that Nathan Nelson Fitzpatrick pointed out to me last week in the eng-phys club… I’ve watched a couple episodes, some are really good and others are a bit of a waste of time but as of yet I think it’s one of the best places online that’ll help you learn a thing or two about wine. I realized early on that watching the episode of the day is largely irrelevant but if you go back through the archives and find something about a type of wine you’re currently drinking or have had recently then it’s interesting to note the kinds of comments he has about that wine style. What makes a good Cab-Sauv? A good Merlot? Pinot Gris? Zinfandel? Well I still don’t exactly know but I’m getting a better idea. The thing I really like is that this is not a tv show about $50 bottles, most episodes are $12-$20.

Triathlon club was in the midst of a website revamping by a couple people who were a little low when it came to internet design skillsets. I pulled a late night (well all-night I guess) and pulled things together giving a new look, maintained the simple to edit approach to the whole deal and made sure it didn’t look like it had recently crawled out of Windows 3.1 ualberta.ca/~tri.

The run went well this morning. Most of it is in the trees through the river valley on footpaths which is nice because it keeps you cool and gravel is alot easier on the knees than plain pavement on concrete. Whenever you get out on a bridge to cross the river though it was extremely hot, no shade and you get the reflection off of the water which seemed to make it worse. Briefly the route follows:

• Hawrelak Park, start at the shelter.
• Run clockwise around the park all the way to the north end
• Follow the “upper” path till you get till groat bridge and turn 180^o.
• Run back to the hawrelak bridge on the “lower” path.
• Cross to zoo side and run (up the hill) to Quesnel bridge.
• Follow whitemud creek trails up to rainbow valley campground.
• Turn around and follow back down whitemud creek, cross quesnel and go through Beuna Vista.
• Re-enter Hawrelak and run counterclockwise along edge back to the shelter.

I had calculated what time I needed to be at when I got to certain spots along the run if I hoped to finish in 100 minutes which was my goal. I started off well and was on track for the first half of the race (50 minutes) but there was a hill followed by a bridge and it was sweltering and I fell behind my “agenda” by about 45 seconds. I made up a minute as we ran through the trees in whitemud ravine but then needed to climb back over the bridge through the sun, I again fell behind my pace by about a minute. Then through the last bit I was able to latch on to a girl who was still running quite smoothly. I passed the 1 km to go needing do pull off about a 4:20 km to make it in time but speeding up wasn’t about to happen very easily. I did my best to hit a 4:20 km but had nothing left for a sprint to the finish and managed to finish in 100 minutes and 6 seconds (1:40:06) so I would consider it a big success, that is a personal record for me and considering the hot conditions it’s a time I am really quite proud of.

I was out for a run last night and decided to try and aim for around 2.5 hours. I also decided that I should try the notoriously muddy trail between the Hawrelak bridge and Mckinnon ravine because it’s been above 30 degrees for a few days here so I figured things would have dried up. I’d never tackled this trail before, it’s pretty up and down and was rather closer to a quick hike than a run but oh well that’s how it goes.

A map of the route shows the distance to be somewhere around 23.5 kms, I typically measure distances on this website to be about 5% below the actual distance so I’d say this was closer to a 24.5 or 25 km run. Not bad for a couple minutes water stop and some serious hiking along the muddy bank of the river.

My hip-flexors were absolutely trashed running up the shallow stairs out of the river valley with a km to go. I’m not certain but I would say that they might still be recovering from the thrashing I have them at the half-ironman 3 weeks ago. My knees didn’t give me any trouble but I can tell that I’ve been giving them a bit of stress they’re not used to with all the fixie riding in the past week.

62 cm fixed gear 48×17 Surly Steamroller

Surly Steamroller from Redbike, and if you think that is boring maybe you need to watch this video to find out what’s wrong with your head.

When I’m 54, I’ll still be riding my bike God willing, but I don’t think I’m going to be setting any world records. When you think about a world record that a 54 year old dude might set my mind thinks of bottle cap collections, and maybe longest nose hair. A world record for farthest distance traveled on a bike in 24 hours isn’t one of them.

Well, Mike Secrest is 54 and he can bike 535.868 miles in 24 hours. I heard about him listening to Competitor radio, he’s got a few interesting things to say and if you’ve got an hour or so I’d recommend listening.