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28th 65F, 18C, breezy, heavy overcast, misty, humid. Overnight thunder storms with cloudbursts. Cloudburst warning for this morning. Heavy rain with thunder forecast for this afternoon. I'll call it a rest day. 12 hilly miles. Just to keep the circulation going. Made it home just in time before a downpour.
The BBC3 coverage of the Men's Olympic cycling road race was very poor. The sound was awful. There was no information, no captions, no timings, no rider recognition, nor subtitling. The commentators (Boardman and Porter) were left treading water most of the time. A complete disgrace! Poor Cavendish was left with not enough road left to do his own thing. Nobody was willing to help GB bring Cav to the line again. Least of all Germany. Who could have delivered Gripel into a classic sprint finish for the honours. Instead of sitting in the bus sulking throughout the race.
Vinokourov was a worthy gold medallist. But the camera cut to watch him celebrate. So we completely missed who came in after that! Talk about amateur night! Will the person in charge of the TV coverage now do the decent thing and resign? Preferably before they are pushed and we all have to watch another total cock-up!
I have also been seeing a number of (almost) buzzard-sized, brown birds of prey. With high aspect ratio wings. As well as many buzzards. Both singly and in pairs. A baby blackbird has been bombing around the garden on foot. It's driving its parents crackers. It can't fly as it has no tail. But it would easily outrun Roadrunner. My wife was worried the cats would get it. So she put the pond net beside it and it hopped straight in. So then my wife could drop it on top of the tall beech hedge exactly where the nest was. :-) 25 miles.
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The women's Olympic Cycling Road Race was breathtaking. Everything one might have hoped for in the men's race. That wasn't, as they tried to repeat the well worn T de F/ World Championship procession. Today, some of the computer stuff was actually working and the commentators could easily identify the riders. There were even occasional captions but very few kilometres left to race signals. There were big questions to answer about the lack of information being fed to the leading trio. They didn't know how hard to race since there were no radios and no time checks!
There were endless attacks, incredible bravery and tremendous speed in appalling conditions. It poured with rain almost continuously towards the end Little Emma Pooley was absolutely tireless at the front of the peloton keeping the pace high and wearing down the opposition. A break was made by Zabelinskaya who was followed by Vos and Lizzy Armitstead. An American made it four but she eventually faded and dropped back.
They stayed away for what seemed like forever as the kilometres slowly counted off. Vos won Gold by out-sprinting Lizzy Armitstead who happily settled for Silver. Only Vos had anything left in her legs after such a long struggle off the front. Zabelinskaya earned a very well deserved Bronze. Absolutely thrilling from start to finish! British men's team, take note.
Grubbe millpond
30th 60F, 16C, breezy, cloudy. A storm cell passed right over me. It was dragging its dark skirts across the landscape as if about to spawn tornadoes! I sheltered under a tree as it tipped down and thunder rumbled overhead. I remained seated on the trike in the hope of avoiding earthing myself. Not long afterwards a huge lorry came bowling along the lane just we both reached a huge puddle. A wall of water rose like an inverted waterfall. I was immediately made wetter than I had been by the storm! 28 soggy miles by bike computer. The Ventus GPS logger never got a fix! I left the now-useless, i-gotU GPS logger behind. I really like the GripGrab overshoes. They kept my feet warm even though they were quite wet from the front wheel spray. I'm trying very hard not to walk in them. 31st 55F, 13C, heavy, rapidly moving clouds with heavy showers, windy. A day of thundery showers. Will I or won't I? I'd better put the mudguards back on if this wet weather keeps it up. Well, the mudguards worked their usual magic and it stayed sunny and dry all morning! Though very windy with nasty gusts. I was cruising uphill at 115rpm and 21mph going. When I came back the same way I was struggling for 12mph! Only 18 miles so far.
There's something wrong with the blogspot editing again. The text is far too small. When I change anything from the usual, default settings, it looks like a kiddy's first reading book. :-)
Click on any image for an enlargement.
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