The fight for the Malliot Jaune

"I am here to win the Tour de France" was the reply given when he was asked to comment on his remarkable comeback in today's stage of the tour de france at the podium. At the start of the last mountain stage, the favourites for the yellow jersey were, the incumbent holder Perreiro, Menchov, Sastre, Dressel and a few others. But Floyd Landis was no where in the picture.
The reason for this was that at yesterdays mountain stage, he had lost 10 minutes to Perreiro coming to an overall loss of 8 minutes.
Coming into the last mountain stage today, no one expected Landis to contend for the top 5 fnish leave alone the yellow jersey, but after todays remarkable breakaway from the peloton, Landis managed to pile on a 7 minute lead which he held on till the finish of the 200.5 km mountain stage with steep ascents amounting to upto 10 degrees incline in the final 20kms. This stage saw none of the contenders in the main field attempting to close down the huge gap that Landis managed to create.
Evidently, everyone was tired after yesterday's mountain stage which saw Rasmussen take the lead in the King of the mountains classification, having lead the race from the start to finish.
Today's stage was an epic showdown by Landis, who had been written off by the Frech Press sometime back, when he held the yellow jersey, as some one who wasnt really worthy of it. Indeed, Landis hadn't won any stage so far. Coming into todays stage, Landis seemed like a man possessed. He didn't know what went wrong yesterday having cracked in the final 20 kms losing a huge 10 minutes. He made no excuses and today he was the man to reckon. Sinkewitz, who was sent to keep an eye on Landis when he brokeaway just trailed him and Landis wasn't bothered about Sinkewitz not doing any pacing as he wasnt in contention. Sinkewitz cracked in the final climb of the day as Landis surged ahead to keep the lead till the end.
At the podium, Landis was very laconic and impressed on the questioner that though he was happy about today's comeback he was here to win. As of today Perreiro leads in the overall classification, with Sastre 12 seconds behind and Landis 30 seconds back. So who's it going to be? Saturday's time trial should be the decider and my money's on Landis.

A new reason to run

Wanna get high? No, not through smoking a joint, but naturally.
Here's a blog that tells you how...

To summarise the article:
While researching on how Marijuana gives stoners a high, researchers in UC Irvine discovered the CB(Cannabinoids)-1 receptor in the brain.

A receptor essentially is an entity in the body that gets triggered by a stimuli or trigger. The stimuli can be from within the body or could be an external substance.
The CB-1 receptor in the brain discovered by the researchers, gets triggered by a compound in Marijuana called THC(TetraHydroCannabinol) which gives stoners that feeling of high.
But THC is an external trigger(coming from Marijuana), could there possibly be an internal trigger for the same receptor, thought the researchers. And voila, they discovered Archidynolethanolamide, christined anandamide(Anand - sanskrit for bliss). Anandamide they found triggered the CB-1 receptor in the brain and this anandamide is released in huge quantities during intense exercise over prolonged periods. Instances of such exercises:
Tempo runs(80% VO2 for more than 25 minutes),long runs(over 1.5 hrs), long periods of cycling, rowing, etc.

The feeling experienced when the CB-1 receptor is triggered internally(i.e. through anandamide produced during intense exercise) is the same as when triggered externally(by THC contained in Marijuana), namely: carefree mood, high spirits, relaxed body, etc. The advantage of the former trigger mechanism over the latter being the lack of any side-effects.

So the next time you think why people are so crazy enough to run or cycle for such long durations, think again: they have a reason!

Revisiting the 'revisited' place

T'was my nth(n = 7 or 8) trip to muttkadu..Never get tired of going to this place where the backwaters meet the sea. Thighs were a little tight on the onward journey and my friend(J) for whom this was the first trip made me work harder than usual. I normally warmup by going a tad slower during the onward journey and return faster. Anyway, J had to pay for his amateurish mistake during the return journey. Overall, a good ride of 2 hours.

Back to training

Its been a long time since I ran or cycled. Yesterday I went for a 2-lap cycling ride(3.5 kms/lap) but couldn't do more then a lap. Frustrated, I went to the stadium and did 3-4 400m sprints. Was satisfied that I could atleast stride well, though was exhausted thoroughly after the sprints.
Keeping a long-postponed cycling trip in mind, I went for another training ride in the insti today. The ride was 6 laps(3.5 km/lap) of gc-gate-gc, totalling 21kms. The splits for the ride are as follows:

LAP NO.......CUMULATIVE TIME.........TIME/LAP(mins)
1....................7:35........................................7:35
2....................15:42......................................8:07
3....................22:42......................................7:00
4....................30:13......................................7:31
5....................38:42......................................7:29
6....................44:44......................................7:00

Average speed/lap: 28.125 kmph, Maximum speed/lap: 30kmph


Going for a training ride after yesterdays sprints in the stadium was a bad idea, but since this is cycling, it is less punishing than running if you train arbitrarily. In running you simply cannot do three consecutive hard days(sprints/tempo runs/long runs) without the body collapsing into knee or shin injuries.
Anyway, going into the first lap of cycling, I was testing the waters, looking to see how tight my thigh muscles were and adjusting my speed accordingly. The second lap was a little awful as I wasn't still warmed up. The third lap was one of the better laps as I was cycling in rhythm and feeling good. Fourth and fifth laps were a little slog ones and the sixth lap was fast because I wanted to get it done with.
I have never cycled more than 2 laps at a stretch inside the insti and hence didn't realise that the badly patched up roads at some places affected my rhythm and the speed breakers, they just slow you down big time. Over 6 laps, the quality of the road plays a big role in the riding experience and no wonder expressways and highways that provide the rider with exclusive space(shoulders) and smooth stretches of roads are too good to resist.

New pondy

Bombay's been rechristined mumbai, madras - chennai, culcutta - kolkatta and finally bangalore - bangaleru. But wait, is that all? Next in line as proposed and approved by the central cabinet is a new name for pondicherry a.k.a 'new pondicherry name'. Considering that all the other cities have been renamed such that the length of the new names are proportional to those of their former names, I wondered as to what possible new name our good old pondicherry would receive. Pondicherry can be shortened to a neat nick name of 'pondy'. I wondered if the rechristined version of pondicherry could also be as elegantly nicknamed. Horrors of horrors, Puducherry, the new name is way off in our nicknaming scheme of things. But the thing is 'pudu' means new in tam and is sort of consistent with the need for a 'new pondy name'.That is to say the new pondy name is infact 'new pondy'. This is amazing because it reaffirms the fact that the name pondy will never go out of circulation but will sutiably adapt to become a mutated version called the 'new pondy'. Here's to the glory of the never-say-die spirit of pondy.

P.S. :)