Sydney, Australia
Legs were a bit sore this morning after my ride yesterday so I decided to take a break from the bike and went down to Bondi for a morning swim – water was superb and there were some small waves perfect for body surfing! My little GoPro waterproof camera has been getting a workout recently but it is just so versatile why not take it everywhere?
…and i’m now officially a world record holder (along with 2067 other Aussies who participated in the havaianas thong challenge at Bondi Beach)! Last year Bondi was beaten by Cottesloe beach in Western Australia but this year we got our own back and beat them by just over 100 people to set a new World Record!! Wooooohooooooooooooo!
Got to Bondi around 10:30am and visibility was down to about 20m and for a period of time the beach was closed:
But it did clear up enough to attempt the record about 1hr past the scheduled time:
Water was warm, everyone was in good spirits and my little GoPro camera captured some of the action (slideshow here). All 2068 of us went in to the water and joined up to form a big letter ‘H’.
All in all a fantastic way to spend Australia Day and a good reminder that we are very lucky to live in the best country on Earth! What could be more Australian than floating on a giant thong at Bondi Beach? (although I am missing the green zinc on my face) Happy Australia Day!
In km on the bike that is! Yep i’m kicking my butt in to gear ahead of the 3 peaks challenge in March – the actual ride itself is now only about 6 weeks away and I don’t really want it to be a struggle-fest on the day so I need to get many, many more km’s in the legs so that I can ride the 235km and not feel completely wasted at the end of it… So I did 150km on Saturday followed by 90km on Sunday – just under 9hrs in the saddle over 2 days which isn’t bad. I will try to make that a regular weekly ritual and combine it with more hill rides during the week and hopefully that will be enough to get me over the line on the day (along with the mountain of food i’ll be consuming during the ride!).
Australia Day tomorrow – off again to Bondi Beach to compete in the annual Havaianas Thong Challenge! Should have some good pictures to post up tomorrow afternoon of the event and the thousands of people who are going to flock to Bondi!
Well we’re now well in to January and thought i’d see how my 20 in 2 list is coming along. I just finished reading Joe McNally’s ‘Hot Shoe Diaries’ – which provides a great insight into professional lighting techniques by basically giving you the finished product and working backwards. I highly recommend that and his other book ‘The Moment It Clicks’ for anyone looking to improve their photography through lighting.
I also registered today with the Centre for Volunteering to advise them of my skillset, interests and availability with regards to volunteering work. I got a call this afternoon from them however there is nothing currently available so stay tuned for my progress in finding somewhere to volunteer regularly.
Going to Adelaide to ride with the Liquigas-Cannondale Team would also have to be contributing toward goal #20 of being a bit more sociable so all in all i’m happy with my start to the year!
…from my LBS (local bike shop) – City Bike Depot: “How would you like to go on a training ride with the Liquigas-Cannondale ProTour team?”
“Uhm, OK. What’s the catch?” I said.
“You need to get yourself down to Adelaide by Sunday and the training ride is on Monday morning.”
“OK – i’m in!”
I mean how often do you get a chance to go on a training ride with some of the world’s best cyclists and just chat away for a couple of hours? This was just too good an opportunity to miss and of course it had to be documented! I had been eyeing off a little GoPro HD Hero waterproof still & video camera for quite some time and this was just the excuse I needed to finally purchase one!
So I put in my leave form, booked myself on the jetstar redeye flight to Adelaide and my accommodation in the Hilton where all the riders are staying, put my bike in for a service to be packed in to a bike box and away I went!
Arrived 8am Sunday morning, straight to the hotel and unable to check-in so I used one of their conference rooms to assemble my bike, do a quick outfit change into my lycra and went for a 50-60km ride up to the Adelaide hills.
This was my first time to Adelaide and so I didn’t know what to expect but it really is a beautiful city – my impression of it was a smaller version of Melbourne – think very flat topography, funky laneways and small bars & restaurants, well laid out roads and similar architecture. The Adelaide CBD is very small and once 3-4km out you are straight in to suburbia. 10km out and you start hitting the hills – either via Gorge Rd up past Kangaroo Creek Reservoir or in the other direction toward Mt Barker.
I watched the Cancer Council Classic on Sunday evening – kind of like an exhibition race with all the teams around a short street circuit in Adelaide. This was the first time i’d seen the ProTour teams ride and can I just say that on TV you do not get a sense for just how fast the riders are going – it is amazing – I will definitely be back to see the entire Tour Down Under next year.
Monday morning comes around, I don my Cannondale lycra , mount the GoPro to my helmet and meet outside of the Hilton @ 8:30am for an easy training ride. Here is the series from the helmet cam. The team in Adelaide for the Tour Down under was:
121. CIMOLAI Davide ITA
122. KOREN Kristijan SLO
123. MARANGONI Alan ITA
124. SABATINI Fabio ITA
125. PONZI Simone ITA
126. VIVIANI Elia ITA
127. WURF Cameron AUS
The team car pulls up alongside and off we go for a couple of hours at an easy pace. We rotate around and chat to the guys – the Italians don’t speak a lot of English and well my Italian isn’t the best but we converse nonetheless. Cameron Wurf on the other hand, the first Aussie in the team, a tassie lad and former Olympic rower who only recently moved across to cycling, has picked up Italian quite quickly and acts as a translator for the rest of us. By the end of the ride 15-20 stragglers had tagged along at the back and no one seemed to mind. That’s one of the great things while the TDU is on – there are so many cyclists on the roads and so many professional teams that just riding around the CBD you are likely to run in to someone famous and can just join in for a few km. If you are staying at the Hilton you’ll likely run in to pretty much all the teams as well as occasionally Phil Liggett in the lifts!
Chatting to the guys it is refreshing to see how down to earth they all are – they took the time to answer all my mundane questions that they’ve probably been asked a million times before and also spoke about some of their funnier moments – Cameron was saying how because he hadn’t grown up with a bike he wasn’t very good with them mechanically and when he got a flat out on the road while training one day with Simon Gerrans, it took him a long time to fix it and so when they got back to the house, Cameron had to step out of the room for a couple of minutes and when he came back in Simon had taken his bike apart for him to put back together so he could learn the ins and outs – haha! It’s little things like that which made going down there all the more worthwhile – as well as getting a memorable group shot:
Some other things that I picked up are around their training regime – they hit the gym most days for 1 1/2 hours focusing mainly on core-stability and also throughout a normal training week, two of their rides will generally be at a very relaxed, easy pace. I had for some reason always thought that when they were on the road it was high-intensity.
Most of them are tall – i’m about 5’11 and am pretty much the shortest in that group shot (4th from the right) and are very very lean as you can imagine. Cameron said he is 183cm (6’) and weighs 70kg.
Then it was all over just as quickly as it had started – the guys had Stage 1 to prepare for the following day and I had to dismantle and pack the bike ready for the flight back to Sydney! Got back in about 10:30pm last night. Good times!
This dish is delicious but does take some prep time! Serves 2.
| INGREDIENTS 1 punnet grape tomatoes PASTA LEMON CHILLI BREADCRUMBS |
METHOD
To make the pasta, mix ingredients together in a bowl and then turn out on to a floured surface, kneed and put through a pasta machine to desired thickness and cut in to 2cm wide strips (use a rolling pin if you don’t have a pasta machine). To make the lemon chilli breadcrumbs heat the olive oil in a small pan, add ciabatta breadcrumbs and fry until golden, add in the lemon rind and chilli and cook for a further minute. Take out and blend lightly until the consistency of breadcrumbs and season well with salt and pepper. In a small saucepan heat the olive oil then add the garlic and chilli until the garlic is transparent. Add the grape tomatoes and cook lid on for 5-10mins on high until all the tomatoes have burst and you have a nice tomato sauce. Put the fresh pasta in a pot of boiling water and cook until al dente. In the meantime mix the prawns with 1 tbs olive oil and season well in another bowl and cook in a fry pan for 3-4mins each side. Drain the pasta and add to the tomato sauce then plate up with the pasta as the base, prawns on top and then garnish with the lemon chilli breadcrumbs and a wedge of lemon. Enjoy! |
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to everyone – I hope 2011 is all that you wish it to be! Had an interesting Christmas & New Year. Flew up to Brisbane December 23rd to spend Christmas with the family on the Sunshine Coast. On the way up had an aborted takeoff (first time ever!) – quite a scary experience really when the plane goes full throttle only then to power down and the pilots jam on the brakes – and then after finally arriving in Brisbane approx 2hrs late had a great big hole in my suitcase:
But thankfully Qantas luggage services had a new suitcase on hand which they promptly offered as a replacement and which I couldn’t knock back (i’d actually been looking for a new suitcase prior to the incident with the one above so the timing couldn’t be better) – the only problem is the new one is quite large:
Anyway – an early Christmas present from Qantas! Thankfully nothing inside the suitcase was damaged in the incident apart from the suitcase itself. Had a good Christmas with the family, my brother and his partner flying up from Melbourne, and my grandmother popping over. From Christmas day until the day we left QLD (December 30th) it was non-stop rain due to the la nina weather pattern, but it wasn’t too much of an issue as i’d come down with a cold/flu and so pretty much all my holidays (up until today) have been spent either inside resting or at the GP 
! Finally starting to feel a little bit better and hoping to get back on the bicycle soon to train for the 3 peaks challenge in March…
Happy Holidays (and yes – that is a massive Christmas cracker)!
