I'm relieved, after a couple of quite painful days hobbling, today my ankle felt ok, ok enough to consider a strength session.  In the mail on Monday I received my new video camera (Sony VX2100), and then today, a tax refund cheque, a new book (Might as well win, by Johan Bruynell, famous for directing US Postal and Discovery to 7 Tour de France wins with Lance Armstrong and one with Alberto Contador) and an invite to my old school's 20 year reunion.  Along the way a very frustrating SCO UNIX install in VMware finally started to behave itself a bit.  Not a bad couple of days, despite the hobbling around and missing training at DISC on Sunday.

So when I finally got a spare 30 minutes, I put on the lifting shoes and headed out to the Power House. I've put some lights in at last, and can use it when it's dark.  I had a go at some unweighed squats, and felt ok.  Warmed up on a few sets of 20kg, 60kg and 100kg.  Felt good.  Ok, we'll try for 5 x 5 @ 142.5kg .. got 'em!  Work set tonnage was 3,562.5kg.  My form wasn't 100%, so I'll repeat the lifts at the same weight on Thursday, but I'm happy with that.  I didn't have time for any other lifts.

I didn't leave myself much time to recover from the squats before tonight's spin session, I finished in the Power House at about 5:50, and got picked up to be at Spin at 6 (thanks Bev!).  An hour later, warming up on the bike with a healthy turnout at the spin session, we had 18 of us tonight, that was good.  I quickly found that while I could clip in, clipping out was not so pleasant, twisting out of cleats with an ankle sprain .. heh .. ouch.  Enough moaning .. I managed to hit 1332 watts in the first 10 second max effort, not a PB, but ok, given the closeness of the squat session.  I might have a play with timing of that, to see if different times between strength work and bike work has a significant impact on peak wattage.  Had a bit of a chunder at the end of our lactate efforts, but more of a retch than anything chunky. No carrots anyway. They hurt, those efforts, lots of blood lactate, very high heartrate ...  We had a good session, the enduros all enjoyed, if you can call it that, their work for the night and there was enough food to keep even Tom happy.  Luckily Vanders is overseas .. he normally eats everything!  I'm sure he's a latent sprinter hiding in an enduro's body.

Everyone's gearing up to watch the Tour, there's a lot of home town expectations on Cadel Evans, who is going in as a favorite to win it. It's pretty exciting to have an Australian ranked so highly as a possible winner, whatever happens I'm sure he'll ride as well as he can and if the recent press is any indicator of the truth, he'll be graceful and decent no matter what the final result.  Many years ago now I was lucky enough to ride with Cadel for a few k's and while we didn't speak much, he was polite and a decent sort of bloke.  Camster and I were riding to watch a Bay Crit and tootling along Footscray Rd towards Williamstown, when we met up with Cadel and we rode the rest of the way together, as four of us (Cadel was riding with a friend).  Back then I was a half-decent B grade flatland roady and we (Cam & I) worked the front of our little bunch to speed Cadel to the crits as he was running late. It was kinda fun to be his domestiques for a few k. We'll be camped on the couch for the tour, cheering him on and also seeing how well the other Aussies go, Robbie again, who seems to have hit some form just in time, O'Grady of course, and even Baden Cooke is back, one to watch for as a bit of a dark horse in the sprints.  Bring it on, and go Cadel!