new wheels

The new wheels arrived last night, wrapped in about 25 square metres of plastic of various sorts and three rolls of packing tape. Still, I’m grateful for those extra few seconds of delicious anticipation while I tried to tear it open with my hands, my fingernails, teeth, a pair of scissors and a small thermo-nuclear device.

The shoes emerged, eventually, looking splendidly yellow. If you pass me on one of my runs, my advice is to not look directly at the shoes. They’re the kind of shoes that would make Eat ‘em blink. If you don’t know who he is you’re missing out; just assume they’re real bright.

Anyway, they’re adrenaline by name, and adrenaline by nature. I wore them on my morning run and they felt so good I think I covered the first 1.5k in about 23 seconds. They were so fast I felt I had to have words…

“Right you, shoes” I sternly said. “A little less of the speedy gonzalez spirit, is what we require from you. Model yourself on the tortoise; be less hare-ish.”

My thinking being - my feet might have been feeling A-OKAY at that point, but there was no guarantee the rest of me would be thankful 15k down the track.

The message did get through and, suitably chastened, the new shoes and I covered a leisurely 17k in about 75 minutes, which is a little over 4.5 minutes per k. Not bad for a relatively hilly training run.

Random observations:

1. Dorset Road Bayswater is uncannily like the surface of the moon at 5:30 am, especially the bit just south of Cantebury road. It’s not that pleasant.
2. The Dandenong Creek Trail in Bayswater is also a little like the surface of the moon, except with occasional trees, birds and hordes of bunny-rabbits AKA disease-infested-vermin. It’s a bit better than Dorset Road, but not all that much.
3. There seems to be a glut of golf driving ranges in the area. Why driving ranges and not courses? My theory is the city fathers of Bayswater like hitting little balls, but don’t like trees. They like their big, open, barren spaces and they’re big fans of rocks, weeds and things windswept. See point 1.