agony of non-running

I spent some of today’s lunch break idly thumbing through a recent issue of Runner’s World Australia in the newsagent. They had an article about “The Agony of Non-Running” (I think – I don’t remember it exactly).

I confess to laughing out loud then and there. If you happened to be in a newsagent in Lonsdale street today and heard a bitter, sarcastic sort of laugh, that was me.

I couldn’t bring myself to read the whole article (and the shop owner was looking at me disapprovingly – what? you think I’m gonna buy this?) but I assume the author also wrote about the agony of getting back to running. You realise, despite your best intentions, you’ve lost an awful lot of fitness. Then there’s the frustration of trying desperately, only to fall short of times you used to take for granted.

Sigh.

Never fear, JH: it’ll come back.

Running
I got up early this morning – again, curse this early summer – and did a hill session. It was about 11km, including 16h hill efforts of 1 to 2 minutes. Fun.

My left knee is hurting today, but I’m pointedly ignoring it. I’m not in the mood to take any nonsense from my sad excuse for a body.

maroondah festival and stuffing around at pools

It’s sad, I know, but back in the day, when life was sweet and young and full of promise, I’d count a festival as being good if it had some combination of these attributes:

• loud
• crowded
• sweaty
• full of alcohol and other things
• loud – did I mention that?
• lots of guitars
• loud

And definitely no kids!

Yesterday I went to the Maroondah festival, and had a great time. Do you know why? There were:

• sandpits (plural),
• a sheep, a goat and a pig to pet,
• free spinning tea-cup rides,
• ice-cream and
• balloons to take home.

My 3 year old had a great time, which means I was happy too. Even if I had to ride on the tea-cup ride 3 times, which made me dizzy.

Earlier, we made a visit to the wave pool in Glen Waverley. Previously, I’d never given much thought to Glen Waverley as a suburb, considering it about as bland as could be. But that was only because I had no idea such the wave pool was there. What’s next, hot springs in Springvale?

Anyway, on a 33 degree day it was packed, but happily so. Again, the kids had a great time.

Running
I managed to run 50km last week, which is good. The last couple of runs were squeezed into the very small windows of relatively cool weather. I suspect this week will be the same.

On Saturday I did a lap of the Ringwood-Croydon bit of the Mullum Mullum Creek Trail. Yesterday, I went for a swim at chlorine central AKA Kilsyth Pool, then ran the long way back to the mother-in-law’s place in Mooroolbark in increasing heat, just so I could make it to 50km for the week.

This morning I was up at 5 for a 12.5km loop around the streets near my place. The running’s getting better, despite the infernal heat.

Man, I hate summer.

things I’ve learned in the last 48 hours

1. My Brooks Adrenaline GTS 7 shoes from 2007, that have run at least one full marathon and something over 2,000km in general training, are perfectly good for messing about the house but for a decent run, they’re a recipe for disaster.
2. Old Adrenaline-induced back pain is no fun.
3. Kids will eat broccoli, beans, carrots and cauliflower for dinner, and love it, if you sprinkle it with a little cheese.
4. Despite my protestations, I am a little vain.
5. Jojo knows this.
6. There’s a muscle in my posterior I wasn’t aware of, but it’s possible to pull it.
7. It’s Melbourne Cup week coming up and we have a day off work on Tuesday.
8. Yet again, I’ve forgot to arrange leave on the Monday, so I’ve missed the chance for a 4 day long weekend.
9. I’m an ijjit.

That’s a lot to take in in 48 hours. No wonder I’m tired!

Running
None yesterday, aside from the normal “after the kids” variety. I did have a swim at the Croydon pool and got nice and sweaty doing some gardening in the afternoon.

Today I woke about 5:50 and headed out for a run. It was 17km, including a section of the Dandenong Creek Trail, my old stomping ground. It’s a good place to run, but on mature reflection, it’s as boring as a boring thing from Boring University with a Tedious Degree.

That’s around 45km for the week. Pitiful, by my usual standards, but it’s in the right direction. I’ll try for 50-60km next week. The next step is to include some quality sessions. I’m thinking my easy hill course, or some fartlek.

old and slow

I’ve been reading just now, a piece on the Punch about photoshopping pictures to make yourself look younger and more beautiful. For example, here’s a “real”, unaltered picture of a 50 year-old woman:

Quite a nice picture eh? She’s pretty attractive.

Here she is after photoshop:

Odd eh?

I’m beginning to think I need of photoshopping these days. In real life I can sort of wonder around in a blissful daze, providing I avoid mirrors, totally unaware of how I look. In pictures, however, it’s hard to avoid the awful truth. I take very few pictures for just this reason.

Here’s my most recent picture, also my new facebook profile shot, taken on Monday afternoon at the docks in Hobart:

Scary eh? Admittedly, I had was pretty grumpy and cold, hadn’t slept much and was feeling less than enthusiastic about going to some conference dinner.

Here’s an older profile shot, taken a few years back at Venus bay, when I was relatively young and fresh-faced:

It’s all going south rather quickly isn’t it? I blame years of hard living, destroying my skin’s youthful elasticity and dampening my joie de vivre.

Running
My joie de vivre is not the only thing a bit damp this morning. Some bright spark (me) thought it would be a good idea to go for a run early this morning. I was up at 5:20 and out the door quick-smart. Even at that time, it was warm and humid. I sweated around my usual 12.5km course in pretty much right on an hour. That’s 5 minutes faster than 10 days ago, but still 8 minutes slower than my PB.

When I finished, I was so sweaty there were complaints. Actually, the complaints were about the smell, but it’s the same general idea.

I use this morning’s course as a measure of my overall fitness. (here is is on mapmyrun.com) It’s 12.5km, but not at all easy. I could run that distance in a race at under 4 minute/km pace pretty easily, but I’ve never got close on this course. There are 3 sharp hills and a couple of long slow ones. They hills are all in the first 8km, so the trick is to keep it strong and steady through them, leaving enough energy to fang it over the relatively flat last 3km.

So that’s my goal (for the moment): pick up enough fitness and speed to be able to give 52 minutes a shot. I’d like to do it in under 50 minutes one day, but that’s a way off.

in sunny Hobart

No joke: Hobart really is sunny today. Very sunny. Postcard picture sunny, I kid you not.

It’s deceiving though. Get yourself caught in the wind or, worse, in the shade and the world starts to feel rather arctic, or rather antarctic.

I’ve been here a few days for a work conference. The conference itself has been pleasurable in a wierd sort of way. It’s about the only place I can talk happily in work/technical jargon without being seen as some sort of leper. In normal life, grown men and women back away slowly when I start to talk about this stuff, and small children have been known to burst into tears. Even my own.

Apart from the conference, there have been some pissups work functions and a few runs. I woke up super early on Monday morning and ran from the city, up through the botanic gardens, over the big bridge and back. It was quite a nice run, if a touch on the invigorating side.

The bridge has footpaths on either side, but they’re a bit alarming. If you run like I do – with a clodding, thumping, heavy stride – the whole footpath seems to shake and shudder and it becomes apparent that it’s only bolted on to the side of the bridge as an afterthought. If a bicycle comes the other way, it gets a bit close too.

Still, I like Hobart, despite the fact that there’s NOWHERE open on a Sunday night (or any night, it seems). I could quite happily live here if I could find a job.

Passports

We’re taking a little family trip in a few months time. It’s out of the country (Vietnam, thanks for asking) so we’ve all had to get new passports. The kids because they’ve never had one before, and the adults because ours have expired.

Hoo-eee, has it been a difficult process.

Firstly, you have a go at getting 2 kids under 3 to stay still, not smile, not cry, have their mouth shut, hold their chin up etc. for a picture. It can’t be done, I’m telling you. Or at least it can be, but not without crying at such a pitch and volume that the whole shopping centre turns around at once to stare at you. And that’s just the adults!

Anyway, we got some pictures eventually, and I went down to my friendly local post office for the interview. It turns out one of the kids’ photos wasn’t right – the distance between the top of the head and the chin was less than 2 millimetres out. 2 mils! So we had to do it again.

Then there’s the form itself, which is available online. You can’t download it and fill it out by hand in your own time. No, you have to go through an extremely tedious wizard thing. At every second step it turns out you need some piece of information you don’t have at hand, so you have to do the whole thing again (because you forgot to write down the code they gave you at the start of the process).

I’m a little cheezed off with the whole thing, let me tell you. It might just be easier to stay home.

Running
A 10km run this morning, with AM. I’m not sure she (AM) was quite at her fleet-footed best, I know I wasn’t. So it was a pretty gently stroll along the river, but in lovely weather.

I’m tossing up doing the Maroondah Hospital fun run this Sunday morning. It pretty much goes past my house, so I should enter. I’m thinking about taking one of the kids in the pram. That might be fun???

Here it is, at last

At last a run. It’s not pretty, and it’s not at all exciting. In fact, it’s kinda pathetic.

But nevertheless it’s a run.

http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/australia/ringwood-east/581125534145515585

Hoo-bloody-ray!

first steps

After a long tough month of no running, in which my mood spiralled way down in the inky black depths, closely followed by what’s left of my fitness, I hope I’m starting to turn the corner.

The worst day, by far, was yesterday, when I knew a lot of people were out there sweating it up at the Melbourne Marathon; I was at home doing nothing, scared to run to the end of the street for fear of causing swelling in my un-mentionables.

Some time in the afternoon, I thought “bugger this” and I came up with a plan. I would run, but only a little, and afterwards I would try to prevent the swelling and bruising by using strategically placed ice packs.

I did it, and I think it worked. I took the dog for a walk, using the long scenic route, and I made the poor canine run for much of it. All up I probably ran 3-4km, at a nice slow pace. I had no choice but run slowly as the dog revealed itself as a very poor endurance athlete. She’s super-quick out of the blocks, and for the first 10 minutes she’ll take your arm off, lunging for the nearest cat, squirrel, tree or car. After 20 minutes, however, you practically have to pick her up and carry her if you want to go above a slow jog.

I iced up afterwards and hoped for the best.

Today I feel fine, which I take as good news. It’s a long way back to the kinds of fitness I had in June this year, but hopefully I’m heading in the right direction now.