As I ventured out on my first morning bike ride, I felt somewhat odd. It wasn’t the strange shoes, nor was it getting used to feeling the wind as I moved down the street.

You see, I opted to just go for a ride. Nowhere in particular, just loiter around the back streets of Mornington for 30 minutes and make sure I get home in one piece. Unlike running, I felt that riding needed a destination.

Run around a block 5 times and get home feeling a great sense of achievement. Ride around a block 5 times and get home feeling stupid. It probably has something to do with the speed I’m traveling. How fast do I need to be moving before I feel like I have to get somewhere.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be riding up to “Morning Star” and back. If you know the area, Morning Star is at the peak of a pretty long hill. If I can make it up there and back home in one piece, I’ll have no problems riding to work next week. That’s my goal for the next week - let’s see if it get me anywhere.

Picked up some new wheels last week and just got home from my first ride on them. It’s a Giant OCR Composite 2 (2007 model) with the clipless pedals and all.
Now, why they call them “clipless” when they clearly have clips on them, I don’t yet know. I do know that you need to remember to unclip your foot when you come to the lights or you might just be getting cosy with the bitumen.

If you’re going to buy a new bike, I would highly recommend the folks a The Freedom Machine in Prahran. They seriously wont let you out of there until they have fitted you properly to the bike, given you a training session and taught you everything you need to know to ride it properly. They were pretty exceptional.

The new wheels have come just in time as my running fling is started to wane somewhat. It’s mainly because of a terribly sore ankle I have developed over the last week. It kind of sucks because I was really starting to enjoy my morning runs. Hopefully the biking will help me keep active until my ankle returns to normal.

I’ve jumped the fence and am now writing this on a beautiful new MacBook Pro! Sheez, it’s different. It took me nearly 30 minutes to work out how to do a print screen (Command-Shift-3). Otherwise, I’m in love with it.

One of the first things I did was install Parallels so I could run XP. The screen shot shows me installing my second XP instance. I’ve set up one for work and another for my own personal home stuff. It runs quite nicely.

Am looking forward to getting to know it better. For the moment, I’ll have to contend with searching Google for every small thing I can’t figure out. Right click anyone?

My Myers-Briggs type is ENTJ with an out of the ordinary pressure-prompted facet. Aside from being amongst most of the world’s leading CEOs (who are mostly ENTJs), the pressure-prompted facet indicates that I usually only spur into motion at the last available minute. This is why my half-marathon in October goal is too far away to be a real motivator for me.So, I’ve set some interim goals and events to keep me on track:

• 13 May - Mother’s Day Classic (8km run)
• 17 June - Run to the G (10km run)
• 7 October - Melbourne Marathon (½ Marathon 21.1km)

Now, the Mother’s Day Classic run isn’t just for women. I double-checked that! I also need to find some events to keep me going from June to October.

I’m hoping these “external” pressures have the desired effect of keeping me on the right track. Let’s see how they pan out over the next month until May 13.
So, anyone wanna join me? The first two can also be walked so they should be good fun for all.

Have just finished my first week of solo training. No sarge yelling at me to keep going, no fit people running past me giving me encouragement and no punishments for not turning up.

This week really proved to me how hard it actually is to do this stuff alone. Getting up to get out there and train isn’t too much of an issue for me. It’s the pushing through the pain barrier that I struggle with.

On boot camp you you achieve some pretty great things. On your own, a simple 2km jog is so much harder. It says so much about the effect a team can have on your improvement.

I will need to find some ways of motivating myself to keep going whilst in the midst of the actual run/training. Grabbing private citizens on their morning stroll and forcing them to jog with you just isn’t working for me.

Here are a few things from Devine Sports I might try:

• Getting psyched to run solo
• Motivational tips for the long run
• Motivational secrets to get you over the hump

Oh yeah, I’ve changed the theme of the site. I was getting a little sick of the other one, although I don’t think this one really quite suits. Will stick with it for a little while though.

Finally got my training plan for the next month or so. This will get me started (after my recent two months of Boot Camp) on my journey to completing the half marathon in October.

By the end of the month, I’ll be doing:

• Four jogs a week of 5kms each
• Two bike rides of 5kms each
• A series of strength exercises for my legs, back and core muscles

The sarge has got me exercising 5 days a week and I’ll soon be riding and/or running to and from work in Mt Eliza. It’ll definitely be a challenge but I’m committed to doing it. Gotta start on Monday!

The Boot Camp physical
This morning we had our end of month physical. I didn’t go to well with the strength exercises. I beat my previous scores for both the Beep Test and the 2km run.

Now that I got past 7 in my beep test, I’m officially a Boot Camp “Alpha”! This is the group which gets the harder exercises and longer runs. I’m not looking forward to running with Bertha on the next hell week!
Here’s my progress over the last two months:

Beep Test (VO2 Max)

• Started at: 3.8
• After the first month: 5.8
• Today: 7.1

2km run

• Started at: 14m 52s (walked a lot of it!)
• After the first month: 11m 49s (ran all of it!)
• Today: 10m 51s (ran all of it except for a 5 sec breather half way)

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the progress. Let’s see how I rate in September when Boot Camp proper starts up again!

This is totally my kind-a-thing. A little morbid, but something we gotta think about one day.
I’m gonna be stuck in the ground somewhere for no-one to ever see again. Or, as I prefer, I’d be burnt into a smouldering pile of ash and shot out into space Star Trek style.

So … why should I burden people with the expense of purchasing an ornate, body-preserving coffin?

Well here are a few options I might enjoy. Recycled, paper based, eco-coffins.

• Eco Coffins
• Life Art (an Aussie company)
• Another blogger’s perspective
• DIY Ikea Coffin
• This is not my style at all

Hat tip to Boing Boing.

Why ride when you can run?

That was the conclusion I came to with my Boot Camp trainer last week. One of my goals was to ride to work twice a week (5kms each way). Much to my surprise, we had just run 7kms in under an hour that morning at Boot Camp so it seemed like my original goal had already been achieved.

Here’s what we came up with:

• Lose 10k by the end of this year
• Ride to or from work twice a week (5km)
• Run to or from work twice a week (5km)
• Complete the half marathon in October

Aside from getting myself fit, I’d be saving 0.19 tonnes of greenhouse gas each year (according to Greenfleet). That’s not much at all actually. Perhaps I should be working up to running to Carlton three times a week?

Especially not in the Liberal party. Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced the phasing out of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012.

Great idea. It at least gets more people thinking about energy consumption. What bugs me though is how much the Liberal government are going to rely on these small changes and avoid making the big decisions.

Let’s take a closer look at this particular initiative. By 2012, this change is expected to cut greenhouse emissions by 800,000 tonnes a year, jumping up to 4 million tonnes a year in 2015. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2004 were around 564.7 million tonnes.

Now I’m no Stephen Hawking, but that amounts to a 0.71% reduction in our total emissions. That’s not even taking into account that our emissions are projected to rise dramatically over the coming years.

Pull your head out Prime Minister Howard and make a real decision.

The synoptic gospels are those of Matthew, Mark and Luke (John was written much later is very different in style and content.) Scholars generally agree that much of Matthew and Luke is derived from the earlier Mark gospel. Matthew and Luke also share some stories which are not found in Mark, pointing to a possible second source - Q.

This is what is called the “Synoptic Problem.” Where do each of these gospels derive their content? Which parts are shared, which parts are unique?

The solution

The age old problem of identifying the 2nd literary source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke has finally been solved. Visit Locusts & Honey for the answer.

Hat tip to Signposts.