Le Tour de France 2013

The Tour is on again :)

For all you guys who don't have access to a tv you can watch the race live on the internet. I found a good site a few years ago where they post the links of the live streams http://www.cyclingfans.com/tour-de-france/live. Enjoy :)

Riding in the city

For a few weeks my city bike was broken so I used my mountain bike which has a cycle computer.

 The stats for the first week:
 - distance: 119.55 km
 - average speed: 15.5 km/h
 - maximum speed: 44.2 km/h
 - time: 7:41:33

The second week I had ridden 80 kilometers (including a short ride) and the third week I had about 65 km. I was amazed how many kilometers I ride with the bike in the city, the average is around 50-60 kilometers a week, that means about 2500 km a year :)

My first half marathon

Last weekend I decided to test my limits again. The fist edition of Mures Half Marathon was a big test for me because I've never run so many kilometers and I have basically no real training. The same thing happened last year when I decided to participate in a 100 kilometer race.

The main idea in these long races is to be prepared mentally and just focus on finishing the race. I thought that it will be very especially after running just 10 km on the treadmill in one hour. I was expecting to run about 2 hours and 10 minutes. I ended up finishing the race in 1:32:14.

The race wasn't really a half marathon it was only about 18 km long. I started slowly to warm up and I was very careful to drink and eat some magnesium candies almost every lap. In the first lap I though that I was too slow because I saw that my lap times were about 10 minutes. It took me a few laps to realize that one lap was supposed to be about 2km so my time was ok. 

The crowd was great and all those people gave me extra energy. The finish line was packed we people and a lot of kids who were handing out water. The 6th lap was the best lap, I thought that I was flying. The 8th lap was the worst because I didn't get no water in that lap and I was preparing for to more dry laps. But the next lap I got water and the last lap was only 8:28.

It was a very nice experience and I hope I can run again soon :)

Nettle omelet

Spring is here so there are a lot of fresh foods around for free, for example stinging nettle. On a Saturday morning before cooking my regular omelet I went out and gather some stinging nettle. I've washed them and put them in the pan with some water.

I left the nettle cooking while I was mixing the eggs.

I poured the eggs in the pan and cooked the omelet

Served with some cheese and toast it was delicious.

PS: eating stinging nettle is very healthy, if you don't believe me google it :)

Running on the treadmill

This week my football game was cancelled so I though I should test myself and run an hour on the treadmill. I got changed and with a bottle of water I selected a workout wit 3 hills. The first 10 minutes were very hard but after I got properly warmed up the time begun to pass faster. Every 10 minutes I drank some water because my mouth was drying out and I was sweating like crazy, this is why it is better to workout outdoor. 

The last 15 minutes were very hard also, I was trying to focus and find motivation while counting the minutes. I don't know how many times I thought that I want to stop for just a minute and get some rest. In the and I managed to run 10 kilometers in one hour, with 3 minutes of warm up and 3 minutes of cool down. I ended up burning 767 calories which is the equivalent of a big lunch. Even after an hour after the run I was still sweating :)

I hope that next time I will be running in the forest, that is the next new workout that I want to try out.

Happy Easter!

I wish you a Very Happy Easter!

Kellemes Husveti Unnepeket Kivanok!

Paste fericit tuturor!

Happy Easter!

Buona Pasqua!

Felices Pascuas!

Joyeuses Paques!

Frohe Ostern!

Bike parking in Targu Mures

In the city where I live there are some very old bike parkings, with old bike stands where you have to put one of the tires of the bike. If it is raining there is a big chance you will get dirty when you are tying the tire to the stand. To make thing worse these bike stands are put in some regular parking spaces where the cars have access, so they get unusable sometimes:

not even the police cares

But there is good news, new bike stands are starting to show up in the city. There is a nonprofit organization in the town and they are setting up the new bike parkings.

You can donate money for these bike stands or you can buy some stuff from their website, I bough a raincoat.

First Spring ride

The weather is so warm these days that you can say that Spring is already here. The ground is almost dry so we went for a short ride a few days ago.

Strava didn't record all the ride because it was looking for the gps signal but it only missed about 10 minutes. It was a very nice, it was cool that after a long winter I could descend with full speed, I didn't have to worry about slipping :)

Stats:
 - Moving time 00:48:16
 - Elapsed Time 00:52:00
 - Max Speed 51.3km/h
 - Avg Speed 15.1km/h
 - Distance 12.1 km

Healthy breakfast

My breakfast every morning at work is yogurt with cereals and honey. It is very delicious and it doesn't contain artificial sweetener and flavors. Here is my recipe:

about 300 grams of yogurt

4 tablespoons of  cereals wit nuts and dried fruits

one tablespoon of honey

mix it

This is a good breakfast wit a lot of vitamins, good sugars and proteins. You can use fresh fruits for an extra kick :)

One more winter ride

Last Sunday I went for a ride in the forest. Last week the temperature was high so most of the snow has melted and there was a lot of mud. Before the weekend it started to snow and on Saturday a few centimeters of snow was covering the mud. I hoped that there is enough snow so I went for a ride.

There was enough snow in the forest so it was a nice ride. It was slippery because of the wet snow and soe mud but it was a lot of fun.

My bike computer is not working so I don't know the statistics of the ride, but it was about 20 km long and way too much fun :)

This was probably the last snowy ride, spring is just around the corner.