The Home of Tom & Morven

You probably haven’t ever heard of free-running, I hadn’t either until several hours before the injury you see here. By chance I happened to watch a movie/documentary called Jump London (refer IMDB).

The goal of Free-running is to “use the environment to develop yourself and to always keep moving and not go backwards”. This is not to be confused with Parkour, which aim is to “move from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body”.

I’m definitely not a Parkour purist as I like to be free to run where I want and how I want, and believe I’m a free-runner at heart (but not necessarily by skill level)! I’m often running over fences (albeit usually only small ones) when I go out running, and have great pleasure in the freedom of turning down one trail and up the other depending on what I feel like at the time. I guess this makes me a free-runner at heart?

Injury from my first ever free-running style of run

To put it to the test, last night after watching Jump London, I went out for a “free-run”. However it was dark, cold, wet, and slippery! I nearly slipped a couple times whilst jumping up onto metal rails (not very far off the ground!) and not long after I clipped my knee whilst trying to jump over a concrete wall, hence the above photo!

Not sure how this seems to have happened, but I haven’t had much time for mountain biking over the last couple months. I’ve been out on little rides here and there but nothing epic. Today was my first epic ride for quite some time, as it was cold, wet, muddy, slippery, muddy, and really slippery. I sort of forced myself to go for a hard ride because I missed out competing in a race today in favour of a social event. What I found was a strong correlation between going for a hard ride in wet muddy slippery mud and frequently losing control. This made it the best ride I’ve done for a long time, also because I didn’t do too badly fitness wise either.

Below is proof to my riding buddy who is currently overseas that I’m keeping up the fitness, and that I should be able to pull my weight for the Foxy1000 100km race with 4km of vertical ascending in October.

Last night Morven and I made dessert pizzas! I made the dough, and Morven organised the topping. Half of it was bannana and caramel, and the other half was nutella, raspberry jam, raspberry lollies, cherry ripe chocolate, and marshmallows.

I was proud to have solved this puzzle, whatever it is called! Not sure where it came from. If anyone knows what it is called please let me know.

I solved it using an analytical approach, which is why I was proud. I then dismantled it taking photos so that I could do it backwards the hard way (albeit physically easier to manipulate).

Morven and I went for a long winters day walk and got wet in the rain. We chased ducks, and I went down a slippery dip which gave me a very wet bum! We also climbed a giant spider web.

Morven and I recently stayed a night at Aldgate Creek Cottage. We were recommended it by a friend, and would like to recommend it to our friends! It’s only a few minutes up the freeway, right in the heart of Aldgate. The creek is literally only metres away from the cottage, surrounded by a beautiful lush garden - and apparently we went at the worst time of year to see the garden!

We enjoyed sitting on the upper balcony sampling some tasty cheeses that Morven had selected and sipping Piper-Heidsieck, overlooking the lush garden.

We then cranked up the methylated spirits fireplace, and watched a ridiculous movie called Blackball. After the movie, we went for dinner at the Mercure Grosvenor at Mt Lofty so that Morven could scope the place out for some wedding that she’s planning. We had a quick meal and went back to the cottage to crank up the awesome fireplace. I ate the majority of the truffles that Morven made (she’s going through a truffle making phase - and I’m trying to encourage her with this inspiration she has for as long as possible).

Everything about the cottage is so cute, it is really new and stylish with very well thought out highlights such as an old ladder that holds the kitchen utensils over the kitchen sink which is mounted in wood.

The next day we went for a hike on the Eastern side of Mt Lofty, down party of the Heysen trail that I’ve never been on before and always wondered where it went. It took us to the Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens, and we walked around the Gardens and back up to the summit. The walk was less than 7km but very steep, so we were both a little tired by the end. What a great way to spend a couple days of leave.

The rest of my leave has been spent mountain biking, finding two pairs of jeans that both look good, fit, AND feel comfortable enough to wear without creating a hernia, AND only cost $99… for both! (This is extremely cheap considering I was nearly convinced to buy one pair of Hugo Boss jeans that cost $229 (it is rare for me to find jeans that fit well). Also have visited a financial planner for the first time (I’ll try almost anything at least once), and been catching up on a bit of blogging, making pesto for Morven only to remember that she was going out for dinner (which I should have remembered about since I was invited as well, but couldn’t go because I wasn’t keen on the vegetarian options offered) and coating truffles in chocolate for Morven.

Tuesday morning I went to the dentist. I was in a state of shock because he told me that I need fillings done on a couple teeth. This is big news to me because Morven thinks I have OCD of cleaning my teeth rather fastidiously. My dentists over the last decade have always congratulated me for having “teeth of the week” or whatever. From short discussions with my dentist and hygienist it seems like the suddenly large amounts of electrolyte drinks I’ve consumed this last summer is responsible for my suddenly I have tooth decay. Thanks Powerade.

(Note that I was going to insert a picture of a Powerade bottle here with an “equals” sign followed by a picture of rotting teeth, but decided against it as the ones my search engine found look rather horrible!)

Anyway, in my state of shock I went to go jump on my motorbike, but… what the!?!? What on earth is a flaming scooter doing parked right up my arse? This was opposite the Royal Adelaide Hospital on North Terrace.

My bike was parked in the motorcycle park, with my wheel right up against the curb. A scooter had parked right up my arse with it’s front wheel almost touching my wheel. There were free parks. No idea what possesses someone to park like that. Why would you illegally double-park a motorbiker, when you could illegally park just next to the motorcycle parks and not be in anyone’s way? What is a scooter even doing parking anywhere near a sign that says “Motorcycle parking”? How did the scooter think I would be able to get out? What was there to stop me from pushing the scooter over? Regardless, was pushing the scooter over an invitation? So many questions, so little answers. The only thing stopping me from wheeling the scooter down the road to teach the learner scooter rider a lesson was the fact that I was pretty sure it’d be knocked over before the end of the day anyway, as the arse of the scooter was close enough to the traffic of North Terrace.

For purposes of public shame, I present the number plate of the scooter.

This is a photo taken by Nick on my birthday. It was an epic ride, we linked up many trails, and I showed him a few tracks I used to ride as a kid, including this drop-off. It took me a while to get the guts to do this drop-off even though I did it as a kid. It’s not a vertical drop-off but not far off. the photo doesn’t do it justice, it’s much more scary when you’re at the top looking down! I made Nick feel my heart rate when we were standing around just after riding off the drop, it was stuck on about 120BPM, purely from the adrenaline! What a good way to celebrate a birthday.

Not sure why I didn’t blog about this earlier, I guess I was busy with our engagement party the following day, and now I’m taking some annual leave and cleaning up photos on my phone.

Ever since my mountainbiking buddy and training partner (Nick) buggered off overseas on an extensive around the world journey, I have been left to fend for myself in the big bad world of dirt, sweat, and blood. (Having said that I normally only get the sweat and blood when riding with Nick as I need him to pump me up.)

Unfortunately, just as Nick left I had to bail out from doing a race I was actually going to do (seriously!) because my Pearl Azumi “Juice” MTB shoes had worn out in a matter of 6 months. Again. This time though, I wasn’t going to be happy with them replacing them with a new pair as this was already the second pair that wore out within 6 months. The only problem was the sole tearing off from the shoe around where the pedals are, I think because I have a tendancy to pull up with my feet just as much as I push down (or at least I try to, to be more efficient and stronger in the long term). The Pearl Azumi rep came back with a brand new pair of the new top of the line Pearl Azumi shoes, worth almost double what I had paid in the first place.

I was very excited, until I got to the store and found that my foot didn’t fit in the shoe because the way that they measured sizings had changed from 2007 to 2008. (You would have thought that they would know about their sizing changes from 2007 to 2008 and could have matched me to an equivalent size). It was a size 44, so I asked for a size 45. But then they sent a size 46, which was astronomically too big! The reason they sent a larger size was because the shop had traced the sole of my shoe and faxed it through to Pearl Azumi, to ensure I didn’t get stuffed around. The store was very helpful in this respect. And the store did to the right thing, but the problem was now that although the sole length was exactly the same as the previous shoes that fit, the volume around the toes was now stupidly too big. Apparently Pearl Azumi make them big around the toes now because Australians have big toes or something. The size 46 was the perfect length, just ridiculously baggy around the toes. May however be appropriate for bigfoot.

I tried on alternative brands and models of shoes in the store, but nothing seemed to quite fit very well. So, I asked Pearl Azumi for my money back and they were very happy to. I certainly can’t complain about Pearl Azumi except that they have just one model of shoes that didn’t hold together.

By the time I got my money back you could understand that I was extremely unmotivated about finding some replacement mountain bike shoes, so I just resorted to riding my road bike with road bike shoes (which fit very nicely, thanks for asking) and it took me a couple weeks to start looking at a new pair. So by now it had been a total of about 5 weeks without being able to ride the MTB. Eventually, I went out and tried on Sidi shoes as I’ve heard they’re extremely comfortable and durable, and fell in love with the Sidi Dragon 2 SRS Carbon, top of the line shoe. It is amazing how easy it is to adjust the shoe, you can even adjust the width of the heel! However they were very expensive, so I ended up finding them for sale on an online store in the UK, which of course meant I would have to wait another 10 days until I got them.

So the total downtime of me and mountain biking was about 6 weeks, and for about 3 of them I did absolutely no riding at all. But I’m back on the bike now, with my brand new Sidi Dragon 2 Carbon shoes and brand new Shimano XTR pedals, and have in one ride noticed my feet are much more comfortable, and also feeling much more confident with pedals that behave exactly how I want (i.e. don’t clip out when I don’t want them to, are easy to clip in to and easy enough to clip out when I’m desperately in need). I do still have some fine tweaking to do of adjusting the cleats as my left foot and knee were sore by the end of yesterday’s ride, and did notice that my left foot was working on a bit of a funny angle. Unfortuantely I had two flat tyres in yesterday’s ride so I didn’t really get to test them out as much as intended, but I’m good to go for next weekend! I expect the Sidi shoes to get some very good ratings. The XTR pedals certainly have. The only reasons the shoes might not get good ratings is value for money, as they are rather expensive. I wouldn’t normally spend so much money on one component but in this case given the troubles I’ve had with finding shoes that last AND fit my feet, I think it’s worth it.

Apart from the short MTB ride yesterday, I went for a half decent road ride with Ben on Saturday, and started my morning training sessions on my trainer this morning, which I hope to do 30 minutes every morning.

Although it’s nearly half a year later that I’m writing a summary about the holiday that Morven and I had together in London, Paris, and Scotland, I have the excuse that there was a lot of distractions when we got back due to being newly engaged. I am very lucky to have blogged from my PDA along the way as I have already forgotten mostly everything except for the proposal! All I need to do is collate all my blog posts and add photos, which I have now done, and also write the story of the proposal.

Here is the list of the blog posts during the journey:

• So the holiday begins
• Arrival in Singapore
• Departing Singapore
• New Singapore Changi Terminal 3
• United with Morven, and off to Paris
• First day in Paris
• Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe, and Versailles (updated with photos)
• Valentines Day in Paris
• Peterhead and Aberdeen, in Scotland (updated with photos)
• Glasgow, and nearly home (updated with photos)
• Publically announcing our engagement

Then finally, the full story of our engagement (private blog entry).