While supervising the Master students at our telescope on La Palma last autumn, I completed the missing scenes for a new version of my Mercator time-lapse movie. Please set it to at least 720p, or go to YouTube and set it to 1080p and full screen, and enjoy! (I know this is not very recent news, but it would be a pity to not have this as a memory on the blog.)
PS.: sorry for not posting during the last half year…
Less than 24 hours after arriving home from Austria, I already had to take the first train towards Bonn, as Elvire (ex-colleague from work) and Matthias (an astronomer himself too) asked me and Jonas to take pictures during their wedding. This way I finally managed to use my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L IS USM lens, which I bought back in January… So Jonas took pictures with a wide angle lens, while I was responsible for the close-ups and portraits. This made things much easier, as we did not need to change lenses or work with two cameras which is common among professional wedding photographers. I am very happy with the results, and of course the freshly wed felt the same way :) A broader selection of my pictures can be seen on Flickr, while here is a sample of them. I really love this lens, it is a pleasure to work with it!
I am 10000 days old today :) / Ma lettem 10000 napos :)
Ok, I will keep it short: it was a nice conference (The Modern Era of Helio- and Asteroseismology, 20-25 May) held on a very scenic spot (Ötz Valley), and I gave a talk: Rotation and pulsation in B stars on the main sequence – a case study of the B3 IV CoRoT target HD 43317, and a first look at our Kepler Guest Observer sample (so the presentation of my last paper and a short intro to my next paper). And one extra cool thing: the landing to and the take-off from Innsbruck between the mountains! I love flying :) (Photo from Paul Beck – click and it gets bigger!)
Although I had a feeling it was not the best idea, I got dragged into a race after coming back from Mallorca by Stan and Tijl… Of course I was curious if I can finally manage to survive a real Flemish koers, because one and a half years ago I already failed once miserably, although I was in an incomparably worse shape back then… Now after months of hard training and a week on Mallorca, with much more experience on the road bike, I was relatively optimistic, so I set the goal of finishing the race for myself, hoping that it was within reach. Tijl drove me to the start in Hoeleden, I was very nervous, but I still felt OK. Then the other competitors started to arrive, mostly with really fancy (expensive, light, and aerodynamic) bikes, some of them came with small teams, so I felt a bit worried and afraid of the competition… Still, I did some good warm up, tried out with Tijl how to take a bottle from his hands while riding with 40 km/h, and then went to the start line, still relatively optimistic, looking forward to one and a half hour of suffering, but hoping that I can finish the race with the main group, without being dropped.
The first lap is always a bit slower, behind the race director’s car, so speed and heart rate-vise it was OK, although I did not feel very good about all the crazy breaking in front of me. Things can get a bit tense when you are surrounded with a 100 other bikers from every side… Then after the first lap, hell broke loose… On the long flat we had a speed constantly above 50 km/h (there was a sleigh tailwind), which was still OK (as for me a heart rate of 180 is still fine, I can take that for more than one and a half hours), but then near the end of the lap, when we got sidewind on a slight uphill section, and the peloton got stretched out into a one biker wide long line, then I could not follow anymore, it was just too much. I was dropped after two laps. But I was far not the first to be dropped. And still, I managed to go another two laps before I was taken out from the race by the director. It could have been much further, if the guys I caught up with would have been more cooperative… But anyway, being dropped from the main group in a criterium race always means it is over. It is just impossible to catch up. Here is the GPS-log of the race.
I was pissed. I was pissed because I really wanted to finish, and even though I felt strong, and I was in a good shape, with a very good fitness level, I did not manage to follow. Ok, I did not do too much interval training this year, but with this much training, I felt very disappointed to drop out like this. And I kind of lost motivation too, I did not feel that I would want to just train more and more and come back next time, I just felt like I do not want this crap anymore. And by crap I mean the racing, not the biking :) I biked home after the race with Stan (who at the end did not participate in the race, although that might have been good for me), which felt good, but I felt hurt inside. It was not physical pain, but mental…
Towards the end of may I still did some proper training, I had a seasonal best (or personal best if you look only at rides without aero wheels) on my standard Leuven-Mechelen-Leuven route, but then I really felt burned out. I need to take a small break, stay off the bike for a while, so by the time I have my cycling holiday on Gran Canaria (starting on the last days of August) I can build up my form again, and enjoy riding again as much as I did in the first 5 months of 2012. I am already at 5130 kilometres this year anyway :)