To put it in perspective this is no big deal :

On Sunday morning my achillies was feeling ok, so I chanced it in the power house.  Did deep squats ok, then lined up the heavy stuff for some 1/4 squats.  Not such a good idea ... felt the twinge on the 2nd rep, and that's it for squats for the day.  I did finish the session with some lunges and bench, but was Mr limpalong at DISC on Sunday evening.  Hoping it'll be ok to use tomorrow if I keep the weight low. Today I've been hobbling around.

I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised at the success that the Hawthorn Sunday Roast session is having.  I caught the last hour of their races and they had a very healthy turnout of riders and it seemed like a pretty good race.  The Llama was shattered before he did our session, but still managed to burn some more matches when we took over the track. It was great to see Mason, Mick and Will come along, Mason to see what it was all about, and Mick and Will had some fun and did some laps.  Nath's getting a lot of fun out of his new Hillbrick, he's thrilled with how stiff it is.

On Saturday we trooped off to watch the Olympic weightlifting trials for selection for Beijing, it was pretty exciting at times and the crowd really got involved when the lifters were doing big efforts.  I took the camera but it was very gloomy in the stadium and even at 3200 ASA my camera wasn't letting in enough light to get any reasonable shots.  I do have media passes sorted for this Thursday's 'Revolution 3' though, and it should be better lit.  My lenses are cheapies and they chew a lot of light.

Hopefully tomorrow someone from Trek will (finally!) get back to me on the sponsorship for the Summer Sprint Series.  I've been nagging them to make up their minds for a month now.  We need to get it squared away so I can start to promote the series properly.

Some personal stuff's been keeping me occupied and unable to commit to meetings with riders over the last week, but we're hoping that things will settle down in a few days and life will return to some semblance of normality.

We're hoping also to get some carpooling happening for more races etc, Blackburn's running a multi-day tour at Eildon in early July and it makes sense to share cars and fuel costs etc.  Let me know if you're interested.  We should really have a carpool section of the website to make it easy to arrange.

From today's Age :

"I already have to think before I drive. I am only going on short trips and walking more. Financially, I guess it is forcing me to look after the environment."

How about this bit?

Already, her three eldest children walk the 1.7 kilometres to school three times a week to save on petrol — while her three-year-old rides alongside them on a scooter.

Why were they driving 1.7km to school?!

Place your bets on when petrol hits $2/litre. This is only the beginning and it's going to hurt a lot.

Tim from cargocycles was due to show his Dutch cargo bike to Pete at the shop on Friday, but due to a combination of factors he was late and Pete was out, so I got the brief demo. It was quite fun to ride and is rated to carry 80kg of cargo in the front tub.  I don't think it'll be quite suitable for my freighting stuff to the Blackburn velo from home, but it might be a good shopping bike, given that the local stupormarket is only 1500m or so from home.  Worth thinking about.... If you live close to shops and somewhere reasonably flat and can't see a way to cart the groceries without using petrol (oil hit $139 USD/barrel overnight, in 1998 it was $10 USD/barrel) this might be part of your solution.

In today's ABC news :

A new report has found the Federal Government is saving more than $200 million a year in health costs through people riding bicycles.

The report was commissioned by the Federal Health Department and is aimed at encouraging state and territory governments to try to increase the popularity of cycling.

One of the report's co-authors, associate professor Chris Rissel, says the figure is a conservative estimate.

"Calculations like this always depend on what you include and don't include," he said.

"While we're talking here about direct health costs it doesn't include all the transport savings, and things like traffic congestion have been known to cause billions of dollars of lost earnings and income."

This isn't news to those of us who cycle, but it's good to have some numbers.

On yer bike!

Another very quick blog post.  I hit a PB on the powermeter tonight.  Totally unexpected. I was expecting to be around 1200 watts or so at best. 1334 watts and a good 10 second duration over 1200 watts.

Not at all what I was expecting. w00t!

A quick blog entry between a lifting session and spin.  Started with deep/full squats, 3 x 10 @ 60kg - not much weight, my balance and technique at these sucks.  More of a technique session for squats, given my still injured achillies, although I could feel my VMO doing some work at the bottom of the squat.  On to bench for some balance, easy enough, then lunges.  I haven't done much in the way of one leg stuff for a few months, so I slapped the empty bar on my shoulders and did 3 sets of 12 @ 20kg (unweighted olympic bar).  I have much technique to learn ... my balance was all over the shop and I was leaning forward a lot.  Bad!  Must arrange a time to see Peter Cayley or someone else to fix my bad technique.  Finished off with deadlifts, but I was too tired to push them much, and only did 3 x 10 @ 90kg. Overall the session, while hard, felt unsatisfying.  Nothing really felt stable or strong.  Maybe it's the leg injury, maybe it's residual fatigue from running on Saturday too, my legs haven't felt good since then.  I dunno ... I'm going to ride at spin tonight and share the session duties with the Foxy Ox (Nath) so I'll squeeze in 30 mins or so on a trainer tonight, will see if I have any power on the bike...

Time to pack stuff and get going!

I haven't done any running for a long, long time.  Way back in 1996 I played my last game of rugby, over in Perth for UWA, and then I busted a knee and decided running sports weren't such a good idea (busted the knee ski-ing, not running).  It's day one of the strength and conditioning course, and we're outside, and the drills we're going through are speed drills.  These guys are all running sports people, so .... it's running stuff.  Ok, I'll give it a go.  We do a few bits of some agility drills to 'warm up' (if you can call it that) and I do ok at them, old rugby instincts still work for playing tag.  For an old bloke with no running in his legs I'm not disgraced.  Then it's time for speed drills.  We do some rolling start efforts, running along at a jog then sprinting for 40 meters, walk back and repeat.  I'm not the fastest of the group, but feel ok.

Then we do 6 x 6 second standing starts on the 30 I think?  Something like that anyway.  I'm slow at these, close to last of our group, and getting some fatigue in muscles not used to working this way at all.  During one I get a small twinge in a quad, but it's ok.  Last one .. and about 5 strides in I feel my left achillies quite suddenly.  Ok ... That's not good!  I don't think it's anything bad, but it is quite tender to touch down one side of the tendon and walking (and stairs!) produces a bit of a limp as the tendon hurts when stretched.  I can get almost a full range of motion out of it and it doesn't feel swolen, and while I could ride last night at DISC during our warmup I didn't want to push it with any sprints so I ran the session from the floor, and gave the guys some time behind the motorbike (who crashed it?  It's bent!  Very unsettling to ride ...).  It's sore today but I'll take it easy for a few days to see how it goes, with some regular stretching etc.  So no lifting tomorrow I think, I'll just do an easy set on the rollers to tick my legs over for a bit.

We did catch the last 20 minutes of the HCC 'Sunday Roast' at DISC on Sunday, and saw Shane using his Summer Sprint Series honed sprinting skills at the end of his 120 lap race to win it.  I only had time for a brief chat with the V-Train but he seemed happy with how their racing had gone and was pleased with the turnout.

Also on Sunday the aboc MTB team rode at the second Chase the Sun enduro round and aquitted themselves very well.

Not much other stuff to report, the S&C course was good, but I felt a bit lacking, although once I get the workbook finished etc I'll have the qualification, it's really only L plates for a S&C coach, the information was covered quickly and with not a lot of depth, and the practical stuff was rushed and I think quite incomplete, but it was only two short days (9-4ish on both days) and there was a lot of material to cover.  Dean Robinson was our course lecturer and he's currently the S&C person for Geelong (AFL) and has a background in of all things rodeo riding, as well as both codes of rugby and weight lifting.  Quite an interesting bloke.  Very passionate about what he does. I think the level one cycling coach course better prepares a prospective coach for actual work in the field, despite being more general, but maybe that's the nature of the beast.

Time to scour the 'net for good ways to treat a strained achillies ...