And it just felt great. Doing the first run in about 27 minutes is not that great, but with another 22,5 kilometers to go of the official ITU sprint distance. Next up was 20 km bike which went pretty good and finishing the entire event with a quick 2,5 kilometers repeating my kilometer speed from earlier, finishing that run in about 13-14 minutes.

I’m wondering why I didn’t do this much earlier. Thing is that if you want to do a self-supported triathlon, you need to think of logistics like what to bring to the water; where to put your bike; where to put your swimming gear afterwards, etc. A self-supported duathlon is much different: Just run 2,5 kilometers and run back where you have your bike. Then ride 10 kilometers and 10K back to the shoes, and do those 2,5 kilometers + some cooldown. Easy!

Anybody with half-decent running and cycling skills can get themselves to a level where they’ll beat my 1 hour 26 minutes or so time. And so will I. Try it out for yourself, but be careful - you might just get hooked on it!

It’s a cardio exercise with a strong focus on intervals. The setup is a gym with a stepper, treadmill, cross-trainer, cardio bike, rowing machine, and an Arc Trainer from Cybex, but you can use a cardio setup of your own choice.

Essentially it’s quite simple and goes like this. Start on any machine and rotate through the other machines until you’ve done them all in the following way:

1. 1 minute of hard workout, 1 minute relax
2. 45 second hard workout, 45 seconds relax
3. 30 seconds hard workout, 30 seconds relax
4. 15 seconds hard workout, 15 seconds relax
5. Move to next piece of equipment
6. Repeat

This is tough and I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you’re just picking up working out. Do it if you want to increase your cardiovascular capacity, burn more fat than with longer - lower intensity exercises, and increase performance. Enjoy the ride…

The most recent blog post with the title “Set yourself up for success” ties nicely into my vision of continuous self-development, so I thought I’d quote the key part of his post here. This is what it comes down to when developing yourself, making sure you have what it takes to do what you wish on short term and long term. It goes like this:

1) Dream your dreams
2) Set your goals (1yr, 5 yrs, 10yrs, lifetime) to make your dreams come true, and share them with your environment (to create accountability, and allow others to help)
3) Break those goals down into realistic timeframes (half year, quarter, month, week, day)
4) Plan your day with those goals in mind (priority setting)
5) Make it happen, by being faithful to the daily targets you set (discipline)
6) Celebrate your milestones (don’t make them too easy, and don’t make them unattainable either)
7) Repeat

Stephan covers issues which are now more important than ever. With increased globalization the only one who’s now driving you to reach your goals - is you. Noone else is going to push you. You’re on your own - like you should be.

To get you started on managing your own goals, I found a website listing all sorts of goal management tools:
http://www.kaboodle.com/rcavin/goal-management.html. Now it’s time for you to go set your own goals.

Have ambition and make it happen!

Moscow surprised me a bit. Despite reports saying that English is becoming lingua franca in business, the capital still seems like there’s a long way to go before this communication barrier really dissappears. As in most other countries fluency in English is seen in international companies (granted: I only have 1 example), and some internationally related hospitality i.e. hotels. In stores and on the street I was not able to get far with English (or any other language for that matter). In addition you have the “cyrillic challenge” which complicates even simple tasks, like ordering a happy meal. though I can’t recommend happy meals the challenge of not being able to read combined with not being able explain the simplest things makes Moscow a challenging and without doubt for some at time frustrating city to visit.

My Russian colleagues shared with me that you shouldn’t think Moscow is like the rest of the country - or vice versa.

So, if that’s correct then the rest of Russia must have far, far to go… My Moscow experience was not unlike visiting Beijing a few years except that Moscow has more of all the well-known mainstream brands - both b2b and b2c. people shouldn’t kid themselves when deciding for a short og longterm venture in Moscow.

There’s still quite some cultural distance for them to cover - and for the rest of us.

Without Google and the internet I would never have gotten this far. Google maps have provided directions. Wikitravel has provided all the info on Moscow and it still wasn’t enough to get me all the way to the hotel on my own steam. Without all of the above, though, I would have had to take the over-priced taxis from the airport to the hotel.

I wonder how I’ll get to the office tomorow…

See the article with more details including a full response from Facebook on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.stm

So with 137 training hours in 2007 the goal for 2008 becomes 137 + 20% = 164,4. I’ll round that up to 165 hours, and I’ll make a 2008 training goal shortly on that.

The other goal for 2007 was to run a marathon: Successfully did this by completing the Amsterdam Marathon in October.

Happy New Year.

See more progress on: Train 144 Hours in 2007