new blog

I’ve been playing around with a different blog platform (when I put it like that I feel like a philanderer – just call me Tiger).

Much as I love you, wordpress, there are some things my new blog does that you can never do for me:

• allow readers to submit photos, video, links, and posts themselves
• write proper html in posts
• customise templates
• easily update twitter and facebook
• blog from my phone a lot easier (including pictures)

The new blog understands me.

So what is the new blog, you ask?

runs.tumblr.com

There’s an RSS feed here:

runs.tumblr.com/rss

Check it out, contribute something, play around and change any bookmarks or rss subscriptions you might have, cause this blog may not be around too long.

I was mocked

I quite successfully managed to avoid the X factor this year, which I’m quite proud of. I was dimly aware of a guy called Altion Childs who apparently lived in a cave. I’m not quite sure what that has to do with singing, but I really wasn’t that bothered.

So, it was something of a surprise to read yesterday that the caveman actually won the whole competition. Not one of those earth-shattering surprises mind, just one of those “Oh really?” level ones.

Now the guy has done an interview “telling all” about how he was mocked, presumably as a teenager. See: I was mocked.

I don’t want to trivialise this sort of thing, as I know bullying can be pretty devastating, but just in case you, dear reader, are in a similar situation, here’s a list of things you can do to avoid being made fun of:

1. Avoid thanking “the mystery that created me” on live TV. If you don’t know how you were created, there are plenty of books and, I suspect, websites that can enlighten you
2. Avoid little crumb-catcher goatees. Even Shannon Noll can’t quite pull that one off (see picture below)
3. Avoid little scarfs (not sure what they are called, can anyone enlighten me?)

Still, I do like the guy, even though I haven’t heard him sing, simply because his reason for going to the cave was to rediscover his “beautiful sadness”. A very Lorca thing to say.

Running
I came perilously close to bailing on my run this morning. I was sitting in the bathroom at 4:55am half dressed in my running gear and I seriously considered going back to bed. Surely I could just run tonight? Luckily I did run, as there’s no chance I’ll want to run tonight. I’m already looking forward to bed, and it’s not even 9am. 12.5km.

too hot

I’m not terribly keen on summer as a rule. I tend to spend the months of January and February mentally counting down “only 8 weeks to go until autumn”, “only 7 weeks to go to autumn”.

I hate feeling hot and sweaty. I hate having to get on stinky crowded trains in the afternoon. I hate having to get dressed in long pants and shirts when it’s already 26 a 7am. I hate it how even the shortest run becomes some sort of endurance event.

So I really just want to grit my teeth and hold on until it’s all over.

When April hits and the weather starts to cool, I am at my happiest. But at this time of year, I start to get a bit down at the mouth.

Melbourne this week has given us a bit of a taste of summer – 3 consecutive days over 30 degrees. I’m not happy.

On the weekend I ran a gentle paced 15km in the afternoon. It was only 24 degrees but I was wrecked at the finish. This morning I ran 12.5km quite early, but even at 6am I was sweating like a pig in a sauna.

Yes, I probably should harden the f**k up, but I’d really rather not.

It’s time to move to New Zealand.

1 adventure completed

For some reason, last night’s appeal for companions on my 27km run through Melbourne’s eastern suburbs didn’t get much of a result. Even a personal appeal to a fellow blogger received a polite “tempting but….” response.

I wasn’t discouraged, and pressed on alone like a good little soldier.

It’s quite light now at 5:30am, which makes the whole enterprise seem much more sane. I’ve also learned from previous experience that spending the whole 2 hours plus listening to commercial radio with their zany morning crews doesn’t actually improve my mood, so today I ran with some podcasts on the mp3 player instead – 1 from Radio National and 2 episodes of TOFOP (a podcast from Will Anderson and Charlie Clauscen).

The run itself was fairly enjoyable and not overly fast, at least until the last 20 minutes when I had an inexplicable burst of energy, upped the speed and extended the route for an extra couple of kms. Have a look at this map on mapmyrun.com to see the extra bits I tacked on in the city.

It was just over 29km in 2 hours 17 minutes.

So, as adventures go, it wasn’t much to write home about, but it’s done.

need an adventure

For some reason I neglected to mention I went to see Leonard Cohen last Saturday night. It was actually pretty newsworthy for me, as it involved my wife and I going out, at night, with no children for more than about an hour. Very rare. The concert was ace, as expected, although I found the merchandising a bit strange. They were selling coffee cups called “Cup of Mercy”. Now, if you’re enough of a Leonard Cohen geek to get that reference, you’ll probably know it’s quite offensive. (Book of Mercy is one of my favorite books, almost good enough to get me interested in spirituality).

On the way home we even had a bit of excitement. It was about 12:30, it was rainy and we were driving along a busy and slippery Hoddle Street. Without warning, the car in front of me slammed on the brakes and I had about 3 quarters of a second to get from 65km to a complete stop. It turned out some drunk (or something else) guy had stepped out into traffic and was dancing in the middle of the road.

Idiot.

The girl driving the car ahead of me was traumatised. She jumped out of the car and starting whacking the guy, who ran away to safety – on the other side of Hoddle Street.

Everyone was okay, at least physically, but it was a shock. I guess us suburban family-types should make sure we’re tucked up safe in bed by 9:30, as normal.

After then, this week has been a bit blah. Go to work, stay at work, go home, go to bed. The only excitement has been the microwave exploding, which isn’t really the excitement I’m hoping for.

So, seeing as there are no near-by mountains to climb, I’m planning on running to work tomorrow morning. It’s about 27km from my place in Ringwood East to the city, but I might even go a longer way. Nothing brightens up a long dull day at work like starting out completely exhausted.

Anyone in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne feel like joining me?

I also have another running adventure planned, although this won’t be for a little while. I plan on running the entire length of the Dandenong Creek Trail. I mapped it out once and I think it’s about 45km from Liverpool Road down to the bay (in Carrum?). It should be doable.

Anyone want to do that one too?

all this reading is giving me an injury

A few weeks ago, I decided I was going to spend the next 12 months catching up on classic literature. This was all Em‘s idea, I should add.

I pictured myself reading Plato in the original greek, Proust in French and Joyce in gibberish. The reality, so far, has been lots of trashy mags mixed with endless websites.

I’ve finally decided to kick the quality reading into gear, and I’ve started off with War and Peace. It’s not too bad so far. There are lots of people called Boris, Natasha and about 20 Anna’s, but that’s fun. The first 50 pages were okay. Unfortunately there are still another 1350 to go. I can’t see how he’s going to pad it out for that long, but I’m sure I’ll find out.

In the meantime I have to drag it into work with me on the train, and I swear it’s making me very uncomfortable. It’s almost enough to make me buy a Kindle.

Running
18km this morning on a very flat course based around the city and Port Melbourne. A beautiful morning for running.

the house is wrecked

Yesterday afternoon was surprisingly pleasant so we had a barbecue. My 4 year old played the whole afternoon with his best friend and also his little sister, growing increasingly mental with cordial, toys and 4 year-old energy. There were spills in the lounge room, spills in the kitchen, messes in the bedroom, spills on top of the messes, cereal on top of the messes on top of the spill.

At one point the boys dragged all the toys in the house outside and tipped them all on the grass, including bits of train sets and puzzles, just for fun.

It was a nightmare, it really was, at least until I remembered we were at our friends’ house, not ours. At about 6pm everyone under 5 was seriously flaking out, and the tantrum rate was about 1 every 5 minutes, so we went home to our nice clean house.

Unfortunately, we’ll probably have to invite them to our house next time. I think I might hide the red cordial.

Running
15km on the treadmill on Friday night. It was my usual pseudo tempo session – I try to run at a steady 14km for an hour, followed by an easy km to cool down. Ho hum.

Yesterday I ran 23km in 1 hour 45 minutes, fairly easy.

the decline and fall of western civilization

It often strikes me that the world is going to hell in rather a rapid way. In fact, I can often be heard to say, on hearing Ke$ha‘s “music”, that life is barely worth living.

I had another moment like that last night.

I figured out I could now watch TV shows downloaded from the web on my PS3. Not such a bad thing, you might imagine, but think about it:

Someone at the ABC has converted lots of TV shows into digital streams and loaded them on their website. That content is sent through the wires to my modem, which then transmits them wirelessly through my living room. My playstation picks them up and then sends it through a special cable to my TV.

Can you possibly imagine the brain-power and tireless work that has gone into getting all of that stuff to work? It’s collossol, and all just so I can watch an old episode of Black Books.

It strikes me that a society that can get all that to work, but can’t be bothered to fix the environment, public schools or Aboriginal health, has some serious personality problems.

We’re all f**ked, I tell you.