Thursday, 13 September 2007

Bike to Work Day!

It has been a while between posts and the move from Washington, DC to Ottawa, Ontario has taken a lot of organizational time and the effects will go on for a while yet.

Anyway, yesterday I seized a locker in the Departmental locker room and today I rode in to work for the first time in nine years in Ottawa. The weather has become rather cool and the thermometer only registered a rather cool 9C (48F) when I left home. Blackadder seems to be an ideal commuting bike and I rode the backstreets smoothly and arrived at the office a mere 14 minutes after I left home. This compares to the hour or so I spent yesterday walking back from drinking beer with a colleague from our Berlin embassy in the Byward Market.

In addition to getting my cycling life in order, I have also entered a duathlon, my first multisport event, on Saturday, October 6th, in nearby Cumberland, Ontario. I think that this will give me the motivation I need to get out on the road and get training again. It looks like it could be fun, and there is a finisher's medal for everyone who makes it through. My coach has suggested I do the sprint version, which is a 2.5 km run, 20 km time trial on the bike and ends with a 2.5 km run. I have found a training plan on the Internet which is set up for an eight week program but only calls for a maximum of 6 hours and 50 minutes of training per week which is really quite modest. Since I have only three weeks to work on this I will have to be a bit more intense, particularly for the running.

2 comments:

Will said...

wow a duathlon? good luck - I have twice watched the World Duathlon chamionships in Switzerland and once in germany (a friend competed for the USA +40).

I was going to do a triathlon once but they wouldn't allow water-wings or a life jacket for the swimming part. Damn purists

Sprocketboy said...

This duathlon is very modest in scope, being somewhat less than a typical training day for me. The triathlon thing looks fun but training for three sports is quite daunting. I did a team triathlon once as the cycling component and due to our excellent runner (and not at all to my cycling), we won a silver medal.