Liz Randall's Cycling Blog - a life behind bars

"With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable"



Wednesday 17 December 2008

10 blogless days

10 days without blogging ..what HAS been happening in the Randall household?

Apart from the incredibly bad weather..where the rain radar was totally blue or green depending which one you looked at(ie rain) from east to west, north to south and the wind and rain combined to topple a couple of our trees over, I've been happily playing with my Tacx iMagic/Fortius trainer. Its actually an iMagic 'cos of the type of braking system it has, but the software is now all Fortius grade.

Any Aussie and anyone from OS reading my blog will know by now that Melbourne is in the midst of a 10 year and once in a 1000 year drought to the extent that we are on water rationing where we are only allowed to water the garden on certain days, not allowed to use hoses to wash cars and not allowed to wash down paths or water lawns at all. On top of that we're now being encouraged to limit ourselves to 155 litres/person/day for all usage. So, a whole day of non stop rain was not only very welcome it was also so unusual it was exciting. Lets hope it also rained in the dam catchment area..there's a real concern that they built the dams in the wrong place, especially the last one built which was supposed to help prevent us ever having to have water rationing and is currently only 20% full.

The iMagic continues to enthrall and now I've learnt a bit about it's twitchy nature via the Tacx VR forum is starting to earn its place in my training program...especially on rainy days. I have trained with a virtual partner, a person from when the thing was a demo model in the shop and created my own training program and its been fun! Cadence and HR are accurate, watts overestimates by about 60 watts..which I have to take into consideration when doing my own program. It also makes my Performance Management chart in WKO+ look really good! Last night, too tired to do track training I settled down to a long ride on the trainer and eventually managed to grind out 90 minutes "up hill and down dale"..so maybe I wasn't all that tired afterall. Totally wrecked my tyre so I'd better get a special indoor trainer one.....

Xmas! Amazon is a total godsend to people like me. I first start thinking about presents on about Dec 10th, which is waaay too late for OS parcels, so now everyone gets Amazon gift vouchers so they not only get a gift, but also the fun of browsing.....ecards are also my best friend....

Work..challenging as ever..staff and patients alike! and since everyone wants to be home for Xmas we have the usual mad rush of discharges and admissions.

I'm also putting into place a fitness program for staff starting off with a 6 person team 90 day virtual journey around Aus via aerobic exercise. So all the aerobic exercise you do takes your team on a 15,000 journey around the country..every hour you exercise is worth about 30km. Now I have to sell itas a good idea, really good prizes will help. This is all part of a Wellness group I'm heading up..already we have a singing group in place and are looking at massage and T'ai Chi. Very challenging.

Enough waffle..Merry Christmas to all!

1 comment:

Liz said...

thank you and welcome! are you a cyclist? how did you land on my blog?? I am always interesting to hear how people find me...I used to have a stat counter that told me that sort of thing, but not any more....