I can't stand the rain, against my window

Bringing back sweet memories, of the pain. Yep - training through a Melbourne winter for an Ironman in a far off destination (Kona, Hawaii) which is famous for bending people's minds and will due to the inexorable heat. Ya gotta love training through a Melbourne winter though, the rides where you come back soaked to the core, fingers & toes numb yet stinging from the cold, your butt chaffed from all the road grit spraying through your knicks, the grime all over your legs and mud splats on your face. I quite often think of HOT, HOT FOOD out on these rides and usually plan what sort of smorgasboard I'm going to have when I get home. All the time sense and sensability get in the way and it ends up a coffee, protein shake & a bowl of porridge instead of the lashings of bacon, runny yolked eggs, fried mushies and bangers on a couple of thick sour dough chunks of bread, oh well.
The first of my 3 month build up to Kona has gone well, pretty easy. There is ONE reason for this -


Being an absolute cycling nut, I could see there was something different about this years version of le Tour. I thought Cadel had a genuine chance of winning so threw myself into watching as many 'key' stages as I could manage. The down side to this was that my training for Kona would suffer. The thought of Cadel being the first Aussie winner of the Tour and watching it unfold held far more significance to me then getting out on the bike and freezing my butt off at 4:30 in the morning, or going to swim squad and dry wretching at the side of the pool after trying to belt out an impossible amount of 200's in an impossible time. So apply myself to the time honoured Aussie trade of couch potato I did, my thumbs gaining callouses from a remote insted of my feet gaining callouses from running. Although I'm not a real fan I am happy for Evans, but i'm probably happier for Australian Cycling in general. I feel my race licence fee's have somehow contributed to his success. I really hope we can gain some positives from this and use it to promote cycling as a healthy, safe and viable hobby/sport and not just render us as lycra clad wankers whom bogan tradies in V8 utes love to speed past and get as close as possible to knocking us off our bikes. Tolerance & respect is what is needed, sadly these attributes seem to be dwindling in our society.
Well done Cadel, well done Cycling Australia.