Sick and tired of being sick.........

One ride this week- out for the regular Saturday coffee ride this morning. This latest round of respiratory issues has kept me off the bike for most of the last fortnight and left me feeling pretty much like I'm back at "Square One".

More X-rays, more blood tests, more antibiotics- the end result is I don't have pneumonia or whooping cough and while I feel marginally better than I did last week, I'm a long way from declaring myself fit and healthy.

I'm beginning to think there may be something in my workplace contributing to my condition. In April of last year I relocated to a temporary/demountable office with about 40 desks/workspaces. My first bout of what seems to be the same thing (in retrospect) started about a week after the move.

I put it down to a cold/virus brought into the office by one of the other employees who has children in daycare and who doesn't think the business can continue to function in her absence- thus she comes to work and sneezes/coughs/phlegms (not sure if that is a verb but it will do in this instance) for all of us to enjoy.

I've had my flu shots (as I have done since 2003) and yet the bouts of this wretched thing come back almost like clockwork every two months. This latest bout has been the worst and has had me off work more in the last two weeks than at work. For most of the past fortnight, whenever I would try to have a conversation, I would be racked by coughing fits- then the feverish sweats and aches and general malaise. Makes it hard to carry out your job and doesn't really leave you feeling like getting up at 4:00am and heading out for a training ride.

Monday I'll be requesting a relocation to another office to see if it is something in the aircon/carpet which is bringing this on. I've never had allergies before but I'm (read my Doctor here) running out of options as to the cause and it's really starting to piss me off.

In the meantime, I'll watch the Giro and the ToC (good to see a couple of Aussies in the leader's jersey for both events) and maybe have another easy spin and coffee tomorrow.

Cheers- ride safe
BoaB

One Night- Two Classics

Saturday night was one for the record books- well at least my personal record book.

Dee and I went to a live presentation of RockWiz with some good friends. For those uninitiated into the realm of RockWiz, allow me to give a quick precis- click on this link....... RockWiz. A fantastic night out with great friends listening to live music and a very entertaining quiz show/performance spectacle.

It was considerably later than usual when we got home- we usually fall into bed by about 9:00pm- and after listening to some great tunes at decibels of a level far and above what we normally subject ourselves to, we needed some time to wind down.

So grab a glass of vino and relax to catch up on some of Stage 7 of the Giro. After Matty Lloyd's solo effort the previous night, we were wondering what the Stage and the strade bianche (The words strade bianche may translate into English as white roads – the gravel gleams brilliantly under the summer sun – but there was no evidence of that today as the deluge turned them into a brown quagmire- from road.cc) would hold. We had been following the text coverage on CyclingNews but managed to find live streaming with English commentary and were absolutely enthralled.

I suspect what we watched will go down as an epic stage of tour stages. The sections of non-sealed road and the rain made for some very demanding riding from the pros and it was Cadel who drove the front runners over the last 10km.

It was a fitting end to the stage that Cunego and Vinokourov were unable to catch Cadel on the uphill finish- it was a massive effort and gave us glimpses of what the grand tours were when the "hard men" of cycling rode these circuits.

What will tonight's stage bring???? I can only hope it is as epic as last night..


Cheers-ride safe
BoaB

And so it begins.....the Grand Tours 2010.

The Giro kicked off last night in Amsterdam (that would be the Giro d'Italia in Amsterdam- as in Netherlands) with Stage 1 being an individual time trial. The next two stages also take place in the Netherlands before the riders have their first rest day (albeit early in the schedule) and travel to Italy for the remaining stages. Pretty hard to find any climbs in and around Amsterdam that would rival the Dolomites.

And I learned something last night about stages and prologues- a prologue can only be classed as such if it is less than 8.0 kilometres. Where the TT was 8.4 km, it does not qualify as a prologue and is classed as a stage as per the report from Cycling News, "According to the UCI rule 2.6.006.1, “ A prologue may be included in stage races on condition that: 1. it must not exceed 8 km. ...."


So there you go- you learn something everyday. Bradley Wiggins took the honours for Stage 1 and will wear the maglia rosa for tonight's stage. Couple of BMC riders just a couple of seconds back- Brent Bookwalter and Cadel Evans (go you good thing!!) followed by Alexandre Vinokourov.


Should make for some great viewing over the next three weeks. For anybody wanting to catch some blogoscopic commentary on the stages, a few links for you:


Cycling Tips


Cyclocosm

Velominati

and Red Kite Prayer

Cheers- ride safe- enjoy the Giro
BoaB