Tuesday 31 May 2011

Life Cycles

Remember my post about the life of a bicycle? Bicycle life

Now this is just another of those videos:







Amazing!

Sunday 29 May 2011

New T-shirt

Saturday 28 May 2011

Driven by Passion

If you are passionate for what you do no one can't stop you.

Friday 27 May 2011

Talent

A friend of mine is a film producer (apart from being a great musician).

Without any help from partners or institutions and with only 150 euros he has gathered a really nice short film. The film is called "Nas tuas Palavras" (Translated gives In your Words) and features a famous Portuguese singer Susana FĂ©lix and other famous Portuguese actors.

Here is the Facebook Page (please help him and click "Like"): Nas Tuas Palavras

And this is the song/trailer of the film:




Fix this name: Miguel Munha because you will here a lot in the near future.


And the making of:


Thursday 26 May 2011

Italian Cycling

I don't need to know how much I like cycling. I could even breath it.

But because I have a background in Economics and Business I like to have a look at companies, their growth and their innovations. 

So today I bring you a video that combines the two. It was made by Peloton Magazine and below is just the trailer. The rest is a bit longer and can be seen here: http://www.pelotonpresents.com/


Wednesday 25 May 2011

Step Back

If you see my calendar tab I should have raced last Saturday. Unfortunately due to my exams and my lack of swim consistency in the last month I talked with my coach and we agreed that I'm going to do some smaller stuff: some triathlons, some bike races (100mile race on the 5th of June) some open-water training and racing and some running races.

Suprising or not since last wednesday I can't walk. Or even think to run. Fortunately I can ride and swim! I have like a pain in the outside of my right foot.



I was recovering slowly but yesterday went to London to vote for the Portuguese elections (and had the opportunity to see the Football Champions League Cup and to stay like 200 meters from Obama - he was inside the Buckingham Palace) when I arrived home the pain in my foot was there again!

Come on tendon I want to run again asap!

Saturday 21 May 2011

Progress

After hearing the comments of Tyler Hamilton about Lance Armstrong (about doping) I saw this interview with Tyler Farrar from Team Garmin-Cervelo (a sprinter from a Pro-Cycling team):

Do the doping scandals distract you from doing your job?

It’s something we are all aware of as cyclists. It’s an issue that every sport faces. Personally, I think from the publicity standpoint it’s bad, but from the sporting standpoint the good thing is cycling does face it right up front. We fight it harder than any other sport. The downside to fighting it is that we have scandals. If you don’t do drug testing, you don’t have any positive tests, a la football. That’s the thing. A lot of sports choose to push it under the rug—we don’t. We do everything in our power to clear it out. And, you are going to have people cheating. It’s human nature to break laws and people will cheat. The good thing is they are catching these people. Yes, it does hurt the sport to have a big name go positive and be stripped of a big victory, but that shows the antidoping testing is working. It’s a sport
that has a long history of doping, sadly. In the last decade though it’s a sport that has been turning itself inside out to change that culture, and has made a lot of progress. Obviously there is still a ways to go. Guys are still going positive, but what can you do? You can’t change it over night. You have to fight it. As they make better and better tests, they are going to catch more and more of the guys who are cheating. We are going to have to deal with a few of these scandals to make it happen. These are the scandals that are the watershed moments of the sport that really changes things.


Before the Festina scandal in 1998, no one really cared. People talked about it, but no one cared. And that was the first time it became a big deal and they said, ‘Okay, we have to do something about this.’ They started implementing more and more doping controls, and they had guys getting caught. Then with the Operation Puerto scandal, it was the next moment where they said, ‘Obviously we aren’t doing enough.’ That was the next moment where all of a sudden anti-doping went to a whole new level with more tests. They started playing with ideas like the biological passport, which took some time. That is a process they started working on basically in 2006 when all that happened. And, it took a few years to develop it to the point where they could actually implement it in to the sport. It’s all a work in progress. I really think it’s cleaning up a lot. If you believe the stories from the 90’s, it was a freak show and it’s certainly not that now. If you take my team, Garmin Transitions/Garmin-Cervelo
in the future, we were one of the first teams to really come out and say, ‘We
are a clean team; we are going to do in-house testing on top of any UCI, WADA or whatever governing body is testing.’ That was an interesting position to stake out at the time. There
were a lot of people that said this would be a test of how clean cycling is. If you have a completely clean team, how well are they going to do? We were fifth in the world this year.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Dreams

I wish I would be in California:

Tuesday 17 May 2011

The moment

3 exams done, 1 to go only in June. Now time to focus in my dissertation and in training.

Today I leave you with a series of questions for you to think about: why do you like to do what you do? What motivates you?

How do YOU Meet the Moment? 





This is mine:



Saturday 14 May 2011

Have a good weekend!



Man or Robot?

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Priorities

Today I received a call from the Masterchef in Portugal (a tv cooking show) to participate in their casting. I was so suprised cause I talked about this show with my cousins last week and now I know they registered me. They know that I like to cook!


At first I thought I can go to Portugal for one week have this casting and be back. But this is not what I want to do for my future - cooking. I like to cook but just as a hobby.  And more: this would take 3 months to film!

Tomorrow I'm going to have 2 exams and Thursday 1 more. After that I want to focus only at my dissertation (to finish my masters) and tri (of course apart from spending time with family and friends :D).

Monday 9 May 2011

Wooden Bike Project

I found a suprising video. This is a project from 2 friends of mine. In the beginning of the video you see the Norwich Library and throughout the video you see the roads that I ride on!

Friday 6 May 2011

Do you know Portugal?

While I'm back in the UK, I saw this video that a really have to share:



This is my country.

Monday 2 May 2011

Keep it simple...

...Stupid!


Not the best way to start a post in my blog. But I come here to write a review about my last saturday race - the Lisbon International Triathlon.

Overall it was really nice to see so many triathletes in Lisbon again and all the environment of the race. The organizers did a great job to put the race up (with the rain and thunder that hit Lisbon the night before) and all the sponsors - even Zoot and Specialized - did a great job to promote Triathlon in the best way!

 My race wasn't the best for what I've trained for. I've started fast on the swim but then a kick in my face in the first buoy made me think what I was doing there.

On the bike I felt good in the first 2 laps (from 4) - I was riding with a regular average of 33/34km/h - but then something was wrong I began to feel without energy and on the last lap I saw my pace slowing down.

My run was nasty! I think I did my whole run in cruise control and I was always thinking about the finish line. And it was a relieve when it came after 5h and 11mins - not even closer to my time last year!

The thing is my nutrition was wrong! I think I didn't eat enough carbs the days before the race and I only drunk 2/3 of my electrolyte drink and 2 gels during the bike (I should have taken at least 1 bottle and 6 gels) Not because I didn't have enough gels or drink but because I don't cope with a high concentrated drink or gel - it makes me more thirsty. I've tried all out at my training but in the race was different...

I've already talked with my coach and we are going to evaluate my nutrition and my training.

------

Apart from the race, I've finished my 2 assignments for the masters and I'm heading back to Norwich on the 5th of May to have my masters' exams on the 11th and 12th of May. The dissertation is going to begin after the exams and probably coming back home in June.

As Nelson Mandela said, "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall!

I'll learn with my mistakes!