Body weight building

I like very much bodybuilding but it requires a lot of time. Recently I discovered body weight building which requires less time and I saw results faster. I'm lucky that we have at the office a power tower and it takes me less than 5 minutes a day to have a complete workout.

I started slowly, with only a few repetitions but as I get more powerful I can do harder and longer exercises. The winter is long and the human body doesn't have limits so who knows what can happen until spring. My main goal is to be able to do muscle ups and maybe walk on my hands.

Here are some videos for motivation:

New kitchen toy

I bough a new kitchen toy, a Moulinex meat mincer. But it is also a vegetable/fruit shredder and slicer, a mini food processor.

It is a great tool, I already used it to mince meat, to shred carrots, horseradish and onions. I will post a moussaka recipe soon  ;)

PS: If you are looking for some cheap electronics check out this link today because it is black friday again.

Night Ride

If you are looking for a way to spice up your rides (with more adrenaline) or you just don't have time to ride when there is natural light outside try to go for a ride in the dark.

There is a very nice trail around the city with a killer down hill at the end which is about 20 km long. It was perfect for a night ride. We had a bad start, a lot of problems with the light and branches but after that it was a nice ride. The speed seemed higher on the climbs, sometimes it was hard to let the brakes loose on the down hills. Check out the track here.

It was interesting that it was a lot warmer in the forest and it was very cold when we got out in the fields. It was a nice ride with a few small crashes and a flat tire. I hope I can go for another night ride soon.

Pictures from the Bicycle March

I've participated in the Bicycle March two weeks ago. It was almost like a Critical Mass...
It was smaller and more civilized than a CM but I think it was a good start.

(More about this in Romanian here)

New homepage

As you noticed (or not) I have changed the homepage.  I wanted to have a portfolio page for a long time and last week after reading a great tutorial (about how to set a static homepage for Blogger) I've made the necessary settings.

The next steps I have to make is to complete this page and make a next new contact page.

Movie batch

A few movies to watch in the weekend...

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 :)