Business as Usual

It's back to business as usual here in Narbonne; the bumper-to-bumper camper vans that have lined the beach roads for the last three weeks are slowly tricking away and I'm noticing fewer and fewer Parisian license plates with irate drivers behind the wheels around town. The weather is hot but pleasantly breezy and the vendanges (grape harvest) began a few days ago, heralding the beginning of the end of high summer. So rather than dodging the camper vans, I'm now dodging grape-picking machinery on the vineyard routes. The harvest is low-key right now - strictly for chardonnay and a few other early-ripening varieties, I'm told. When the harvest is in full swing in a few weeks time, I'll have something new to look out for on my rides: the slip-and-slide that I've been warned will ensue when the roads become soaked in grape juice and decorated with slippery grape skins. It seems that a cyclist has many foes, even in cycling paradise.

In my preparation for Ironman, I have arrived at the 'heart' of the training program: three weeks of race-simulation training sessions with a sprinkling of anaerobic interval workouts in all three disciplines; all designed to bring together the last seven months of training into an explosion of peak fitness that will presumably burst forth on October 4th as planned. As far as I can tell, everything seems to be going accordingly to that plan.

In other news, I've updated the gadget on the left that shows my recent pictures so that it now actually merits that name. It only took me a full morning to figure out how to do what I did seven months ago when setting up my blog. It served to remind me of how very un-technical I am and left me musing as to whether I am better suited to a life where the seasons are marked by the cycle of the vines.