Finally we did an mountain bike race on Saturday, the southern hemisphere's longest running mountain bike event Karapoti Classic, by the way not far from where we live.
We finished in relatively good times, Michal a bit under 4h and Jana a bit over 5 (see the results), which I thinks wasn't too bad for our first race with hardly any training. Although I have to admit it is far far away from the track record around 2h15 and friend of us Ivan who did under 3hrs in the elite category.
Moments before the start | Chvili pred startem
Michal in finish | Michal v cili
Jana in finish | Jana v cili
http://slideshow.uuholo.org/ - What is this about ?
This is not our idea, in fact Michal has overheard it at some presentation and started to implement it at home, as many similar "projects", that appear here and there from nowhere and that instantly gain the highest priority and other things stay in behind ;)
However the pricip is very simple: We have a photo frame in our living room (made of old LCD monitor), that really looks almost like a picture. And because we don't want to have there our photos (only) but photos related to our friends and relatives, you cam determine what's going to show there - you can send us a new photo and withing short time (up to 10 minutes if the computer at home is switched on) this photo will be shown both in the photo frame as well as it's small version on Internet. It will stay there for defined time, actually 2 weeks from processing (I think).
How to send a picture then? It's simple - send an email to address uuholo@seznam.cz and anywhere into the message body enter the keyword "uuphoto" or "uufoto" (either of them) and the fist attached file (image) will be processed. Don't send more than one image as only the 1st one will be used. If you also want to add text message please put the text into the Subject field. And please be aware, both your email and the message will be shown so please send us only images you would consider putting in your living room. Besides of that, we reserve the right to remove any image that seems inappropriate to us.
From February 28th until March 28th Wellington's Circa Theatre (www.circa.co.nz) is showing Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'N' Roll (www.rocknrolltheplay.com). The play itself is partially from Czechoslovakia between 1968 ana 1990. Czech club was asked for some help and together with Jana & Jirka Babor's we have recorded for them some Czech sentences and provided them feedback to Czech living etc. on one of their rehearsals.
And on Saturday 28th was the premiere. We attended together wit Babors and Gustav, who celebrated his 75th the day before. Some of ud haven't been in Theatre for years and for most of us it was the 1st premiere, but the play was really nice and worth to see.
First reviews can be found on www.theatreview.org.nz and www.stuff.co.nz
After two "serious road trips" on mountain bike we decided that it was time to get also some road two wheel vehicles and we bought some two road bikes Bauer in good health so we are now ready to hit the asphalt....
Michal's Bauer Flite | Michaluv Bauer Flite
Jana's Bauer Warp | Janen Bauer Warp
We went for another road bike race this season. This time for Round the Mountain Cycle Ride [www.roundthemountain.co.nz] that goes around the Taranaki volcano on the North Island. Jana went for The big ride - Solo 175km, Michal for Enduro 275km. So together we made 450kms on bike this Saturday.
Finally Michal finished on 3rd place in Enduro and Jana on 4th place of ladies, 32nd in total. All thanks to our dedication and trusty biked (mountainbikes with 1 inch tyres), and also because lack of participants in our categories ;) but this doesn't change anything on Michal being bronze and Jana less than 10 minutes of the bronze.
Michal's time was 10h57m (including changing a tyre twice) and Jana's time 7h15m. Average speed shown by cyclocomputer was 26,2km/h and 24,6km/h (average speed excludes stops).
You can see our lovely new cyclo dresses in which we represented our home Bike clubs from Czech (SLK Semik and KPC Praha [www.kpc-praha.cz]).
Now is the time to start training for Karapoti [www.karapoti.co.nz], that's in less than 2 months from now ...
After the race|Po zavode
Final photo|Cilove foto
Map 275km|Mapa 275km
Map 175km|Mapa 175km
So we decided to take our sporting a bit more seriously and we registered ourselves onto Round the Taupo [http://www.cyclechallenge.com] last Saturday (29/11), which is sort of non-competitive race around the biggest New Zealand lake, roughly 160km on road. There were also shorter variants on the MTB tracks, that we denied, and also longer options where you can do this circuit twice or four times, which seemed to us "a bit too much for now". At the end the quickest guy doing this category did that (640km!) for something under 24hrs, which is under 6hrs per lap!
Weather was very good, in fact maybe a bit too hot. But finally we have in relaxed tempo (although Jana may disagree with this formulation), did all the 160km in a bit ovet 7.5hrs on our MTBs but with road 1 inch tires. Considering we did not train for this event at all i think it was quite good ;)
You can see the map and some pictures below.
Map of the race|Mapa zavodu
Bike storage|Uschova kol
Start
Getting closer to Tongariro volcanos|Blizime se k Tongariro sopkam
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