sjh - mountain biking running linux vegan geek spice - mtb / vegan / running / linux / canberra / cycling / etc

Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
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email: sjh@svana.org

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Tue, 25 Jul 2006

Floyd Stories - 13:37
I found a great Landis Profile/Interview linked on Kottke today. Most amusing, the concept of Floyd stories throughout the peloton, as suggested he has increased his legend status a great deal in the tour this year. The 30 coffees in one sitting story is from Lance's book, the others come from somewhere, who knows how much they change with being re-told. As someone said to me in an email the other day after seeing Landis' incredible stage 17 performance. Landis is an absolute dude! I tend to agree.

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Sun, 23 Jul 2006

Another funny quote from an Aussie in the tour. - 01:37
I do not know if this is an accurate quote, however Mike Tomalaris just repeated something he claimed Robbie McEwan said to him the other day. In discussing how interesting this tour has been and the battles between the top GC contenders. Apparently McEwan said "Yes unlike the last seven years where there was a huge battle between GC contenders up until the tour prologue when Lance took control of the race". Heh, yet another good quote from an Australian Tour rider.

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Thu, 20 Jul 2006

This tour is amazing - 23:40
Not to take anything away from Armstrong, his tour wins are incredible, however it really is true this is the most interesting tour to watch in a long time, possibly since Lemond's last win or longer.

Two days ago Landis seemed fairly comfortable on he stage finishing on Alpe'd'Huez, then yesterday Landis exploded on the final climb and lost 10 minutes to the stage winner. At this point everyone wrote Landis off. Now tonight watching the stage, Landis went on the attack, somehow they let him get away and he has a huge gap on the rest of the contenders.

And Landis is not the only game in town, Evans and Rogers are both riding well for the Australian flavour, especially with Evans likely to end up higher than his 8th place finish last year this time around.

I should go to sleep so I can function at work tomorrow but my god this is incredible, such an incredible race to watch this year.

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Sun, 16 Jul 2006

Honesty in interviews - 22:23
Geez I love the sense of humour some Australian cyclists tend to use when interviewed during the tour. Last year I was amused by Stuart O'Grady's sarcasm and now tonight on the live coverage there was a snippet of them asking Cadel Evans how the day was in the stage that aired last night (long hot flat stage where Landis let a break away go more than 30 minutes in front and get the yellow jersey). Cadel's response was along the lines of "Long, Sunburnt, Sore Bum, but thats the tour". Good to see such blunt honesty from a high GC rider, you never heard Armstrong say Sore Bum in interviews.

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Sat, 15 Jul 2006

Mythtv manual record problems - 20:54
There have now been two really strange things I have seen with my mythtv setup and manual recording schedules.

Yesterday evening I was glancing over the upcoming recording schedule. I had set it to record the Tour de France highlights show every evening at 6pm on SBS, this has been working fine for the last week and a half since I set it in there initially. However for some reason the Saturday and Sunday evening sessions were not in the schedule. No idea why, anyway when I noticed this I deleted the lot and then made another manual recording telling it to tape every 6pm half hour slot from tonight onward and it was in there fine for as long as it should be.

Tonight I saw something even stranger, while the mythtv box was recording Dr Who (according to the status screen it said it was currently recording that) I did an ls in the directory all the recordings are stored in. I saw the 1800 file from the tour highlights (half hour show) and then I noticed there was no new Dr Who file (1930 for an hour) being recorded. I did the ls while the show was being recorded, so I tried a ps auxw and noticed the tuner was indeed doing something as the [cx88 dvb] kernel process was there. For some unknown reason the damn software did not actually save the file to disk. After the show finished I had a look at the upcoming schedule and I notice it had removed all future recordings of Dr Who from the schedule (every Saturday at 19:30 for an hour).

I have no idea why this is happening, Paul Wayper has suggested I should put the effort into ensuring the guide data stuff works and is tied to channels so recordings can be done through that rather than simply requesting a recording at some given time. However it is somewhat strange to see manual recordings playing up in this manner. For now I will simply have to be careful and regularly check the recordings I request are in there and hope they all actually get written to disk.

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Mon, 10 Jul 2006

Two 8 hour events, a mtb race and a rogaine. - 13:31
The past two weekends I have competed in two 8 hour events, one the working week series (8 hour mountain bike races) round 4 at Yarramundi near Richmond in greater Sydney and the weekend just past in the ACT RA Championships 8 Hour rogaine held in Bournda National Park near Bega (the camp was the rather lovely, and well equipped Hobart Beach campground). My photos from the two events are now online.

I think Hobart beach campground would be a good place to go for some AR training, good Kayaking both on lake Wallagoot and in the ocean. Great trail running and bush trekking in the region. Not much mountain bike potential on the maps we had but there probably is more available not too far away.

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Thu, 06 Jul 2006

Some short crit times from this morning - 13:30
One thing that can provide some indication of improvement or speed is to have a specific circuit or climb you know your time on and can compare against that at other times. This morning I thought I would put that in practice a bit during the ride. I selected a short (2.34 KM) circuit at Majura, mostly on single track, with the intention to ride it at pace a few times during the morning ride.

I suspect I am somewhat slow and unfit currently so I hope to improve on this significantly. This morning I did both my fast laps of that circuit in almost exactly 8m30s, the second lap I slowed down on all the climbing, however there was more daylight so I was able to do that lap with no lights.

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Wed, 05 Jul 2006

The pungent smell of spam - 08:44
It is obviously true that spammers really do find you anywhere, today I received spam to my palindromic ua.di.hjs@sjh.id.au email address. It however only received a spam assassin score of 3.5, ahh well.

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Tue, 04 Jul 2006

Oh so slow - 23:03
So on the weekend I competed in round 4 of the working week series, mens pairs with David McCook. The results came out today and I was able to see how incredibly slow I was. I should have been able to consistently lap at under 30 minutes per lap all day. I did not crack 30 minutes at all, all day I was finding I could not climb at speed. I guess the heads up I had on Stromlo last Monday was pretty much accurate, I really am a bit slower than I should be at the moment.

I am beginning to consider actually training for the first time in my life (as opposed to going out and having fun on the bike all the time). In order to do this I should probably learn a lot more about training and physiology. Three books that could help if I choose to buy them are "Bike Racing 101 by Kendra and Rene Wenzel", "The Cyclists Training Bible by Joe Friel" and though not cycling specific it sounds good (I read the first page or two on Amazon) "Running: The Athlete Within by David Costill".

I had a look at the ANU library and there does not seem to be anything on exercise physiology or similar topics (probably because that sort of stuff is taught at UC instead). The ACT Library service seems to have a few books that may be of interest so I can read them first though.

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