Running is rubbish

Bad weather and work pressures have stopped me getting out to the woods for a trail run for the last couple of weeks, so I've resorted to pounding the pavements again. On Wednesday night I extended my regular route a little to 7.5km (including 80m of descent / ascent), which I managed in 44 minutes. More importantly I started to get back into 'the zone', with my mind quieting down, my body feeling loose and a sense of calm sometimes penetrating the plodding. God help me, I started to enjoy it.

Until I woke up the next day with a very painful knee. Normally it's my shins that ache so at first I thought I'd partly conquered the shin pain, but the day after that the aches & pains although focused in my knee also spread down to my shins and ankles. I wasn't quite hobbling, but I was definitely limping. I sought solace on-line, but my regular bunch of triathlete runner types basically told me to suck it up, everyone gets hurt so your whinging and get on with it. Which to be fair is probably good advice.

By coincidence I also got a copy of 'Born To Run' by Christoper McDougall yesterday. The author starts off with the simple question 'why do my feet hurt when I run' and then heads off to a remote area of Mexico to dodge drug smugglers & hang out with a tribe of ultra-runners. His early comments on running are worth paraphrasing...

"Take up any other sport and my injury rate would classify me as defective. In running, it makes me normal. The real mutants are the runners that don't get injured. Up to eight out of ten runners are injured every year. No invention yet has slowed the carnage. If anything it's actually ebbed up; Achilles Tendon blowouts have seen a 10 percent increase. Running seemed to be the fitness version of drunk driving; you could get away with it for a while, you might even have some fun, but catastrophe was waiting right around the next corner'.

He also visits a sports doctor who's advice is 'get a bike'. Now there's a thought.

Fuzzy pucks

After a couple of days hidden away in the cave the cheese wheels started to grow a fine white down and when you opened the cave lid it smelled strongly of Brie (to quote from someone on-line - 'from the smell of things you're either making french cheese or something is really off'). The mould fairly quickly spread over the whole of the cheese until it resembled (using another description I've stolen from online) 'a fuzzy white hockey puck'. The smell had reduced considerably at this point, presumably because the mould is sealing in the odiferous-ness

The camembert is looking great - I don't know whether to age it or put a leash on it and take it for a walk. The brie suffered a bit from the earlier cave collapse - the bars of the rack had sunk into the base of the cheese and it needed some delicate surgery to seperate the two. But it does mean you can see the underlying gooey goodness 

The cheese now gets wrapped in tinfoil and aged in the fridge for a couple of weeks. The fuzzy mould should die back leaving a crusty shell, and inside the cheese will slowly liquify. *yum* 

The second wheel of brie was kept in the fridge as a comparison, and as you can see from the picture below pretty much nothing has happened to it.

That's now in the cheese cave and should hopefully be pulling on it's downy white jacket as I type this.

Busy day

Alarm set for 4.30am
Woke up at 2.30am and catnapped restlessly for two hours
Finally dozed off again at around 4am
Wake up at 4.30am with the alarm
Headed off to the airport through heavy rainfall at 4.45am
Arrive at the airport 5.15am
Board plane 6am
Arrive Sydney 8.30am
Picked up hire car (XR6 Falcon!) and was off putting myself in the hands of the gps 9am
Pick up salesman from his hotel 10am
Arrive at client 10.15am
Three hour meeting with 1 coffee offered
Drive bqck to airport, arriving 2pm (5pm flight)
Join salesman in the Qantas club (I'm just a worker drone so don't have access, but our salesman and my boss both do and they can sign me in)
Manage to get bumped up to a 3.15 flight
Land in Brisbane 4.15pm
Drive home through more torrential rain missing the acceleration of the XR6
Early night tonight!

Things cyclists say

These are going viral on the web right now, but just in case you haven't seen them...

SO stoked about that clip.

and the roadie riposte (which isn't as good)

Incidentally I'm not able to respond to comments at the minute - blogger doesn't seem to be playing well with Internet Explorer - so thank you for those who write things! Anbd Kitty - I need that trail bar recipe!

Welcome to the cheese cave

Spot cheese question - what's the difference between Brie & Camembert?

Answer - not a great deal. They're made in exactly the same way and using the same ingredients. The process is the same -

• Heat milk up to around 30 degrees C.
• Add starter culture (to give the flavour) and Penicillum Candidum (which will give the white mould shell) 
• Leave for an hour or so
• Add rennet to curdle the milk
• Leave for a few hours to curdle (longer than for other cheeses)
• Ladle curds into molds and drain without pressing (don't cut or cook the curds like you would for other cheeses) 
• Keep in a cool environment for a week or so to let the outer mould form
• Wrap & age in a fridge for another few weeks

The only differences are the size of the cheese wheel and (to a lesser extent) the 'terroir' of the milk used - the two cheeses traditionally come from different parts of France and so the milk will have a different flavour. The size of the mold is important as a smaller Camembert wheel will have a higher relative surface area than a larger Brie wheel, and so the outer mould will have more of an impact on the flavour.

I had a go at both this weekend, using 7 litres of milk to make two Bries and a Camembert. I used milk from the Coles in Fairfield for the former and from the Woolies in Buranda for the latter, so that should replicate the terroir.

I'm also experimenting with using an esky as a 'cheese cave' and will need to remember to swap the ice-block out every morning - not sure if this will give a cool enough temperature, but it's that or the fridge and the fridge is apparently too cold. You're basically providing the best conditions for any mould to grow, but because you've pre-loaded the milk with specific cultures you're assuming the mould you want will out-perform any nasties that may have been introduced along the way.

These wheels drained overnight, and the crusty texture is because I used cheesecloth in the molds. I think this was a mistake, I should have just ladled the curds directly into the molds, and that may lead to a wetter crumblier cheese as not all the whey was expelled. We'll see. The cave is a bit ad-hoc and needs some further internal development, but that can wait until I don't have a batch of milk products going off in our sink. I'll post up more pictures as the cheese ages. I'm keen to try some more variants as well, adding more salt into the curds and also using raw milk (traditionally Brie is always made from raw milk) - this is where the benefits of doing it yourself really come out, as raw milk cheese cannot be sold in Australia.

Incidentally the names of both cheeses come form their respective places of origin - Brie is a province around 60 miles away from Paris and Camembert a village in Normandy. So I should probably say I'm making Brie-sbane....any suggestions for the Camembert alternative?

Edit - I had a potentially catastrophic collapse in the cheese cave when I tried to change the freezer block - the grid supporting the top wheel fell onto the lower wheel and started to slice through it. So after some emergency reorganisation the top wheel of brie is in a container at the bottom of the fridge, the bottom one is still in the cave with the camembert. Will be interesting to see how the two compare....   

Return of the Roadie

Regular readers would possibly be surprised to hear that I do still occasionally ride a bike. When I do it is at best a very relaxed affair, but I'm also lucky enough to be friends with a number of people who take their riding a lot more seriously than I do. One of those people is Rach, a lady who is making waves on the local road-racing circuit and has also competed in 24 hr solo mountain biking events at an international level. She manages to be both an awesome bike rider and a very nice lady (assuming you don't steal her Chomps on race day), and she occasionally drops into this blog to make comments.

She is also generous enough to this blog from her own. The format she uses posts up not only the title of my blog entry but also the first picture that I show. It always makes me laugh to think that her blog, mainly frequented by uber-fit hyper-competitive road racer or triathlete types, regularly shows pictures of cheese, beer, pork scratchings or a short chubby bloke beaming awkwardly at a camera whilst pointing at something food related.

Anyway - this post has a road bike in it so will fit right in. I've recently rebuilt my Abeni with some quality parts sourced from racer mates for remarkably low prices (in some cases measured in bottles of homebrew).

Steel frame, hand built in Sydney in probably the mid 80's and paired up with a half-chromed fork of unknown origin. Built up with Reynolds wheels (thanks Rach) which roll beautifully, 10 speed 105 'brifters' (sic) and an Ultegra rear mech. The lightweight rear skewer wasn't strong enough to hold the wheel in the semi-sloping dropouts and snapped when I tried to cinch it up, 3km from home, so has been replaced with an old Suntour steel skewer which has the strength to withstand the awesome power of my mighty thighs (and poor gear choices).  

Carbon FSA K-lite cranks with 53/39 gearing (no compact weakness for me), running on a Miche bottom bracket (Miche components in cross-compatibility shocker!). The chain was a pain in the arse as you can't split a 10 speed chain and rejoin it in the usual way - I found that out the hard way as my first chain lasted about 10km and then gently slid off the bike and lay out flat on the road like a dozing snake.

The cable routing for old steel road frames is a bit rudimentary and I found that the cable was snagging slightly. This threw out the precise indexing required for the rear mech. Fortunately Gordy came to my aid with some cable inner which smooths everything out.

So it was a bit of a battle but after sorting out a few teething problems it rides really nicely. Perfect for my entry to the crit-racing circuit this year*. Until then, here it is in its natural environment. After all it is a cafe racer.

*Only kidding Miff :)

A musical interlude

I've been out on site for the last three days doing some user training. Not difficult as the people I was working with were good people, easy to get along with and who picked up what I was teaching fairly well. But still draining, so I just get home and relax. So here's a musical interlude which kinda sums up how I'm feeling at the minute....