The Tour de Bois is over for another year, with everyone home safe and sound. Lots of great riding and fun was capped off by an evening listening to the Rolling Stones outside the Adelaide Oval on Saturday night. A nice way to finish a week of cycling.

It does appear there has been one casualty of the Tour – my Achilles. The day we headed off, nine days ago, I ran 8 km in Adelaide. The injury was essentially non-existent. I was running freely and without any pain.

After a week of low mileage, averaging around 3 km per day, my run this morning had to be cut short due to pain in the Achilles. I thought the rest would do it good, but not so. The cycling itself was not the cause. The only other differences from what I had been doing for weeks were the rest and the fact that I didn’t do my rehab exercises and ran in shoes I hadn’t used for several weeks.

I’ll be resuming the exercises today and using the previous shoes. The injury feels like it did two months ago. Hopefully it doesn’t take two months to get back to where I was a week ago.

On  more positive topic, Tony Mangan has finished his epic world run, covering around 50,000 km over four years. Tony’s accomplishment certainly surpasses mine, as he ran much of it unsupported. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been at times, either carrying his gear or organizing to have it forwarded on each day, while I had Carmel to support me each day. Great effort, Tony. You can now enjoy a well deserved rest period.

On This Day

Oct 27, 2012

Distance today = 49.70 km; Total distance = 13,760.71 km; Location = Warwick, Rhode Island – 41 45.158′ N, 71 26.081′ W; Start time = 0946, Finish time = 1749

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/237646252

We had a great night in Newport. I met up with Gregor MacFarlane from the Australian Maritime College in Launceston, Tasmania. Gregor and his team have done a lot of work for us (Oceanlinx), testing wave energy devices in their wave tank and basin over the past decade. He and I, along with Carmel, Don, and Roger, headed into town for a night of celebrations (just for the sake of it). It was great to catch up with Gregor in a very different environment.

Roger ran the first 16 km with me today. He has now run over 68 km in the past four days. He’s having a day off tomorrow, but will reach 100 km for the week, prior to me finishing the US leg in Boston on Tuesday.

The first half of today’s run was very pleasant, though the second half was a bit too busy. Chook and Don have headed up to New Hampshire for the night to meet up with a client. They’ll be back tomorrow night. In the meantime, I am hoping I don’t get too wet when Hurricane Sandy starts to impinge on the area tomorrow.