Holy crap! It’s been 27 years since I last posted, oops! In the meantime I have started another blog for me to not update, at http://dreamhouse.amylewisdesign.com.au. It’s a photo journal of my favourite houses around Melbourne

We’ve moved to a new server and the design broke when we did that. I’ll fix it, you know, one day. Anyone still reading here?

Did 10 man-pushups and some situps, which earns me the right to eat frozen pizza for tea methinks!!

Pretty much in that order too.

No profile madness, no time to ride

Looking forward to a Cogsgirls session tomorrow

instead of this…

I guess the fact that I like my musicians to look like dirty hippies (especially when they sound like dirty hippies) is probably showing my age, right?

Last week was a big week, everything-wise. Here the profiles, oldest to newest this time

Get a beer, this is Bowing to peer pressure: War and peace edition. You asked for it, SecretCoach!!

Around the Tan with Chris

Note the time (6am on a Saturday! That’s committment!). Jogging around the Botanical Gardens with Chris for the first time. We dragged mum out with us, and she power walked the course not a whole lot slower than we jogged it LOL. We were able to use this as amunition to get her to do the event with us, yay! At this point my heart rate is starting to settle down a bit, and isn’t shooting up to 200 every time I walk 3 paces…

• 28 April 2007 Jogging around the Tan with Chris

Around the park with Phil

At this point my motivation for getting off my butt to train for the Mother’s Day Classic is about zero (sorry Chris!). In order to combat this, Phil brings out the hyrid and rides aorund the park in front of me. So nice of him to lower himself to do 8km an hour or less… Nothing special here except I wanted to vomit by the time I finished. I guess that means I went hard enough. Miss riding. We were listening to a cycling radio show on RRR, and one of the guests said when he was out with a bunch one night he saw a girl jogging and her ‘boyfriend’ riding a bike beside her. Apparently someone yelled out “Buy her a bike you cheap bastard”. I don’t remember anyone yelling at us, but we do see bunches ride past us when we’re out - wonder if it was us?! Does that make us famous somehow?

• 1 May 2007 Jogging around the Park with Phil (sucks)

Spinervals

Spinervals (think Aerobics Oz Style, but with stationary road bikes - looks as dumb as it sounds) on the trainer, hard work not just because it’s arse busting but because of the craptastic music they play on the DVD. Thanks for the backup cousing Andy

• 3 May 2007 Spinervals on the trainer

Pootling in Caroline Springs

Phil and I made the long haul journey to Caroline Springs to go riding with Shayne. Shayne’s also had a transplant, and is considering maybe doing the Around the Bay in a day with us this year, since Phil’s effort last year was so inspirational Shayne’s just starting out so it was just a quiet pootle. It was fun to see how low I could get my heart rate - you can see it shoot up to 130 bpm when I scared the crap out of myself and nearly didn’t unclip in time!! Wonder how many calories that burned? Did some sprints on the way back to have a go

• 6 May 2007 Caroline Springs Shayne

(The long awaited) Ben busts my ass

Conveniently, Ben said he didn’t have any lights so couldn’t go for a ride. Stupid me volunteers to ride over with my spare ones, thinking we’ll head out for a quiet ride after and everyone will be happy. See previous post on this ridiculousness… Short ride my (busted) ass.

• 7 May 2007 Ben busts my ass

Pete busts my ass

Maybe Ben and Pete are ganging up on me? Pete later admitted that he was running fast on purpose to see how far he could push me. Answer? Not that far LOL, as previously discussed.

• 9 May 2007 Jogging, Pete busts my ass

Final Mother’s Day Classic training session with Chris

All this ass busting (especially running) has me missing riding. That and, pizza for lunch two days in a row means I could really do with burning 2000 odd calories - riding to Willy for jogging will do it!!

This needs to be documented as the first time I’ve ever been jogging and had fun doing it. I’m having a great time training with Chris, chatting, not too much ass busting. It’s all good! And I get to ride when I’m done, what more could I ask for?! Purposefully riding easy to save myself for the Mother’s Day Classic.

• 11 May 2007 Riding to Willy
• 11 May 2007 Jogging with Chris
• 11 May 2007 Riding home from Willy

Clinic with Cogsgirls

Warren Cay from BikeNow runs Cogsgirls skills sessions for girls for free on Saturday mornings. I’ve only done one session previously (training for Buller), and it was just fantastic. Since I spend all my time riding on my own, or trying to keep up with Ben or Andy, I’ve got no idea how to ride in a bunch at all. This session we rode from Hampton to Black Rock, did some drills, rode on to Mordy then back to Hampton.

Warren showed me a few “safe” ways to contact riders in the bunch. I have to say that riding down Beach Rd rubbing shoulders, LITERALLY, was quite strange. Thank you Warren for being so patient with me!

Since this is the day before the Mother’s Day Classic, I’m thinking I should take it easy - funny how quickly I forget that once I get out there LOL. I practised some pairs rolling turns with a guy called Peter who was there helping out, which was heaps of fun. I broke my heart rate again (195 oops!), but it was awesome fun. We rode back to Hampton as a bunch, which I found really difficult. I feel uncomfortable riding beside people, and when I was at the front felt nervous and anxious about riding too slow/fast/wobbly/etc.

The whole bunch kind of disintegrated going up a hill, and Warren sent me off (don’t really remember?) to keep up with Peter - more awesome fun. I forgot to turn my polar back on again when we left Mordy, so I’ll never know how fast I was going (ohhhhhh how convenient!! no evidence! *evil laugh*).

Had a great time, can’t wait to do more! Profile is a bit messy because we were doing drills.

• 12 May 07 Busting my ass with Cogsgirls!

(As an aside, I cut the post ride coffee to hustle home and get ready for an auction we were hoping to bid at. The opening bid was $30k above the estimated price, and it ended up selling for $150k more than it was advertised at - thus the suddent disinterest in househunting).

Mother’s Day Classic!

We rode into the city to do the Mother’s Day run (even mum!! I wished her Happy Mother’s Day halfway up Nepean Hill heheheh). We were running a bit late, and in all the fuss I forgot to turn my foot pod on or even hit the lap button when we started running. Because we were running late I didn’t meet up with Chris until right before the run (soooo sorry Chris!!), and you can see my heart rate going all over the place because I was stressing out. The body is very fascinating!

Once we hooked up, we had a fantastic run. I had such a great time, and I think Chris and mum did too. Mum ended up running quite a lot of the course, and based on the time from the website Chris and I averaged about 8.89km an hour, which is a record for us (probably because Chris decided to sprint the last bit, thanks!!). It was a really great event, with cool freebies and so many people. A great way to connect with family and friends

Special mention to smarty pants Pete, who did the 8km run and completed his 4 faster than we did Show off!

I had the polar running during the ride as well, so where the cursor is, is approx the start of the run.

To balance out all the frantic activity we had a lovely breakfast at Babble on Babylon, and then had afternoon tea at Nanny’s. Such a nice day

Looking forward to the next event with Chris, maybe Run to the g?

• 13 May 2007 Running the Mother’s Day Classic

I got a cold the very next day, which sucks.

So that’s about all the profile madness I have!!! It certainly is a disincentive to exercise that it takes so long to waffle about this stuff here… Maybe that’s why I’ve done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING all week?

So I’m off now - think of me with my champers (Lance says yes!!) watching the Search for the newest Pussy Cat Hussy, because that’s about all I’ve got the energy for.