men’s underwear and feminism

A fascinating sociological study, as reported today in theage.com.au – Men’s underwear key to fidelity.

Yes, apparently men only buy their own underpants when they are hoping to entice a potential partner into a relationship, according to a new survey.

Boys up to the age of 19 generally let their mothers buy their knickers, and after we get married we’re content to let our wives do the job. It’s only in the in-between period and when we’re thinking about having an affair that we pay any attention to our jocks.

Just in case you were wondering, 31 is the key number. If a man buys more than 31 pairs of underwear in a given year, that’s a sign he’s looking for a shag.

(Just out of interest, who in hell buys 31 pairs of underwear in a year? Bloody hell!)

This story rings true, in my experience.

Yes, it’s partly a feminist issue – why should women have to buy underwear for men?

The thing is, from my perspective, I’d much rather my wife didn’t keep buying me boxers. She won’t stop, no matter how many times I ask.

As far as I’m concerned, underwear is only there to perform a pretty basic function – cover up my unmentionable bits. As long as it does that, I don’t much care about what it looks like, whether it has holes in it or, god forbid, how fashionable it might or might not be.

I’m pretty sure I have renegade boxers at the back of my drawer that must be at least 5 years old. And they’re still going strong. I don’t need a brand new pair with go faster stripes down the side. Who’s going to see it anyway?

Also, I have a pair of sandals I bought in London in 1999 that were pretty daggy then and are worse looking now. But stuff it: they’re really comfortable, have great support and have gotten me around the world at least twice. Why give them up?

Running
None today. My left knee (the “good” one) has been playing up, so I thought I’d have a rest day.

work

It’s been a busy old week at work, this one. Today was one of those days when you get to work super-early to do some extra work, and look up from your computer to discover it’s 5 o’clock and time to go home. Where did the day go?

My “lunch break” was a frantic dash downstairs to the take-away, which was shovelled into my mouth while writing a report.

So, not much time for blogging.

I have, however, done a bit of running. 3 out of the past 4 days have included a run, and the fourth day had a swim. So that’s good. If I can keep up some regular running, even if it’s of average quality, the fitness should start to come back in a couple of weeks.

Tonight I’m catching up on the various bits of news I’ve missed. A lot of it seems to involve kids in bad situations: one baby feel in front of a train, a 6 year-old American kid who didn’t fly away in a balloon (not sure I understand the significance of that one) and some 16 year-old girl who’s sailing around the world.

Strange.

blister

I’ve developed quite an interesting example of the species blisterus superpainicus over the last couple of days. It’s on the right foot, right at the end of the second toe.

I’d post a picture, but some of you might be eating. My wife took one look, lurched backwards and retreated at great speed, muttering something under her breath. I only caught a few phrases: I think I heard the words “something out of Alien” and “enough to turn you gay”, but I might be wrong. Also, I was in the bath at the time, so she might have been referring to almost any part of my anatomy.

Anyway, back to the blisters: I blame the new shoes. They’re bad ‘uns. The padding just doesn’t seem to be there, meaning I have to wear thicker sock than normal. The thick socks bunch up and rub in sweaty conditions, and blisters are the inevitable result. Sigh.

I popped it in the bath tonight, but it’s still not pretty.

Running
8.4km yesterday, including 6 strides. Today I had a long run, starting late in the day from Forest Hill shopping centre and heading home via an extremely tortuous route. It was 32km in 2 hours 23. Ho hum.

I’m not a big fan of starting the long run after lunch-time. It just doesn’t feel right, and I can’t seem to get the fuel right. I normally start my long run 45 minutes to an hour after a breakfast of cereal. That works for me.

chucking out dead shoes

There’s a definite life cycle when it comes to running shoes, at least for me.

It goes something like this:

1. Shoe comes out in the US – becomes object of lust, possibly unattainable
2. Shoe comes out in Australia – I begin to haunt Rebel Sports
3. I come into money, or the old shoes fall apart – they are mine!
4. Too nice to take out of the box
5. First few runs – avoid taking them anywhere there might be water, mud, dust or muggers: in short, anywhere
6. Preferred option – run in them whenever I can
7. Dependable – the default shoe
8. A little tired, but still good
9. Very comfortable, but seen better days
10. First foot pain on long run – ignore it
11. More foot pain – can’t ignore
12. Move to cupboard – use for short runs
13. Move to other cupboard – for messing around the house

I can get that far pretty well, but there’s one last step I can’t take, namely:

• Put it in the bin

The affect of all that is I end up with cupboards full of old running shoes, lending a peculiar “fragrance” to the house.

There have been complaints.

So, last weekend I bit the bullet and chucked a few out. I now own:

1. 2 pairs of actively used Brooks Adrenalines – 1 for home and one for work
2. 1 pair of Brooks Racers
3. 1 pair of Brooks Adrenalines for messing around the house

And that’s it! I had to be cruel and lose, by my calculations, something around 5,000km worth of shoes.

Running
A 14.1km run this lunch-time in the cold. It felt good, like I was running well and fast. Not particularly quick though. 1 hour 5 minutes.

fun weekend

Apologies for the more than slightly sarcastic post title there.

It’s been cold, wet, windy and generally wintry here in Melbourne, which never really boosts the joie de vivre. Driving all over town looking at car yards doesn’t help either. For some reason, the entire car sales industry of Melbourne has taken the weekend off too, which makes it double irritating.

It’s one thing to have to stand around kicking tyres and making conversations with slimy crooks, it’s even worse when the slimy c’s don’t even bother to show up.

Anyway, we have our eyes on a car to replace the one lost in last week’s spider/tree incident.

By the way, if you were worrying, the spider was okay too. In fact, I half suspect the spider never existed, either that or it made a really quick getaway post-crash.

Running
5km on Friday to pick up a hire car. The long run was yesterday – 32.5km in exactly 2.5 hours. A nice run – not too much fatigue and I felt fine for the rest of the day

Active Feet
I dropped into AF in Heathmont this afternoon. I’d never been there, and was keen to see how my feet might measure up. I tried some Kayano 15s (very good – would consider buying them), some Trances (not so good – quite firm) but unfortunately the guy in the shop was quite definite that Brooks Adrenalines were the ones for me.

Damn it. I’m sick of them. Sadly, I think I’m locked in a vicious cycle. I’ve been running in them so long my feet have adjusted so perfectly to them, nothing else is quite as good.

I’m not going to switch mid-marathon training, but I might consider it later on in the year, just for a change.

at last, a good running shirt

If your physical form is slightly below the ideal; if, like me, your body is – how to put this? – somewhat lacking in grace, beauty and athleticism, then finding clothing to wear while exercising is a pretty fraught process.

I notice lots of girls at the moment going for the uniform of some species of black tights below the waist and a pinky-peach-coloured top above. That seems to work okay for them, but I don’t think it’s a unisex look, particularly.

For me, shorts are a disaster. Actually, it’s the legs that are the disaster, but finding shorts to cover them up appropriately is pretty stressful too.

Shirts aren’t so bad, generally, although you can still go wrong. I bought last year’s (2008) Run for the Kids event t-shirt in a fit of charity and optimism about the size of my “pecs”. It didn’t fit, was a yucky colour and was hopeless to run in, oweing to the fact it ended up dripping with sweat and weighing a tonne in about 3 minutes.

This year I held off buying one until race day, so I could have a look at them first. I did buy one on the day, and boy am I happy.

It’s possibly the best running shirt I’ve ever had. It fits me, it’s light and soft and doesn’t get heavy with sweat. I’ve only had it 10 days and I think I’ve worn it 4 times already.

Good stuff.

Running
I was, and am, severely sleep-deprived today, so I didn’t expect much from my lunch-time run. Still, you never know if you don’t try, so I headed up to Princes Park for a tempo session. It turned out pretty well, even in the wind. I did 7 minutes fast, 3 minutes normal, then 7 minutes fast, then 3 minutes normal. With warmup and cool down it turned out a smidgen over 12.5km.

failed experiment

No, not another post complaining about Connex, although that might be topical, this is yet another post about running, and shoes.

You see, on Sunday I did the Run for the Kids wearing Brooks Racers. For those of you not familiar with them, they’re light-weight running shoes to be used for road racing. They super-light and fast, but not very supportive.

The plan was to run with them at RFTK and once or twice over half-marathon distance as a precursor to a full marathon at Gold Coast in July.

I think I can almost definitely kill that idea. I felt fine running in them, and did okay, but I’ve felt pretty ordinary afterwards. I’ve had a sore hip, sore thighs, sore soles of my feet and even a sore lower back (although that might have been caused by the bean-bag at home).

I think I’ll have to stick with my boring old Adrenalines.

Running
14.4km yesterday. It was supposed to be an easy recovery run, but I misjudged the distance a bit.

racer

The early-stages of marathon training are pretty good so far. I ran 80km this week, including 29km this morning. The run was fine, at a steady easy pace and I upped the pace over the last 3km. 29km in 2 hours 15.

That’s fine. No pressure. I kinda followed my nose a bit, and ended up running down Mountain Highway for long periods of time, instead of the usual trek up and down the Dandenong Creek Trail. I’d like to be doing these sorts of runs a bit fast in a month or two, when my fitness picks up a bit.

Shoes
This afternoon I happened to be in Smith street, in Collingwood, AKA cheap running shoes-town. Nike was a heaving mass of humanity – not much fun with little kids in tow. Brooks was far more civilised. Also, they had a pair of Racers going cheap in my size.

They’re not the most recent model, but I’m quite happy to be behind the fashions in these things. With any luck I can do a fast 10km or two. I’m thinking about running a marathon in them, but not quite convinced. Here’s a picture of them.

As Steve would say, that’s all.