more sydney

I’m still in Sydney, or as it apparently likes to be called – “The Emerald City”. Well, la-de-dah… I’m beginning to lose count of the times I’ve been told the Harbour Bridge is “affectionately known as ‘the coathanger'”. Whatever….

Apologies if that sounded a little Valley-girl/Paris Hilton.

In my defence, Ms Hilton herself is in town at the mo, which is causing no end of excitement. Well, the various gossip columnists seem excited and the “serious” commentators have been falling over themselves to write articles saying how silly it is that everyone’s writing articles about her.

Today, the town is in New Year’s Eve mode and the streets around where I’m staying are choked with would-be revellers, some of whom have been lining up sinced 8am. I kid you not. I personally couldn’t think of anything worse than being jammed in with a million other dickheads, “partying” at Circular Quay, fireworks or no fireworks.

Running

The main gripe I have with the whole NYE shebang is the difficulty I’m going to have getting a ride to Hornsby tomorrow morning to do the Black Stump run. In fact, it’s pretty much impossible, and I may as well use this opportunity to officially scratch myself.

Ahh, that feels better….

I’ve run a bit over the last couple of days – yesterday around the Cremorne Point area, which is where I’m staying, and this morning a nice trip from Cremorne, over the coathanger, no I can’t bring myself to write that – the Bridge.

Nice. Although it would be appreciated if the good people of Sydney could lay on some flattish bits to run on. Perhaps if they have time they could bulldoze Kirribili, which seems to be between where I am and the bridge. If they could level Johnny Howard’s place, so much the better.

silly season and sydney

We’re well and truly into the silly season now. It was 36 a couple of days ago and choked with smoke, and tommorrow it might snow. Work’s stopped but I’ve never felt more tired.

To top it all off – Eastland Shopping Centre has all-night shopping; which is convenient if, god help you, you feel the need to pop into Westco at 4 in the morning.

Or you could pop into Amart allsports, which is a newish sports shop there that claims to have Melbourne’s cheapest sports stuff. I don’t know what planet they’re living on, but their shoes are definitely not the cheapest. Go have a look, see what I mean.

Running

Running this week has been quite consistent with the general silly season theme, if nothing else. I only managed to run 4 times, due to a couple of days where it was too smoky for me to run. Perhaps you, kind reader, are the kind of tough guy who scoffs at puny weaklings like me who can’t run in the smoke.

I, however, come over all faint and feel a kind of tightness in the chest, headache and pain in the throat. All the smoke-induced symptoms are still there today, worse luck.

Still, I managed a relatively productive 24k today, to bring the week’s total to above 60k.

Sydney

I’m off to Sydney next Friday to spend New Year’s Eve with my papa. I’m contemplating a FatAss run in an area called Hornsby, but only in a distant, appalled sort of way. It’s 33k and I have no idea what kind of conditions there are, other than it’s described on the website as “challenging”.

That does not fill me with confidence.

Neither does the date – which is 1 January. Even I’m not that much of a masochist. Or am I?

Escher, Newton, Aldi

It was one of those mornings when every time you turn a corner you see some Everest-level hill climb staring you in the face, taunting. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be any corresponding downhills, despite the fact that I ended up back where I started.

Either my perception is a bit warped or Ringwood, Croydon and Mooroolbark have somehow shed the bounds of Newtonian physics.

I think the second option is more likely. If Newton showed his face at Ringwood station he’d get the c**p beaten out of him. Either that or sold some drugs that would have put back western science 150 years.

Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but whoever designed the roundabout system near Aldi in Croydon was clearly a fan of Escher. I can never work it out and end up going around the same roundabout about 12 times, accelerating until I achieve escape velocity and fly off somewhere in the direction of Kent Road.

Anyway – this morning’s run was 17.6954km at an average of 4.5 minutes per kilometre.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m pretty happy with my running at the moment. The challenge will be to not let it drop off much over the next week or two. I’ll be off work from tomorrow, so I’ll probably post less often.

Have a wonderful christmas and New Year.

highest ever

I know it’s not necessarily the best way to measure your training, but I do tend to focus a lot on the number of kilometres I’m running per week. For the last few months this figure has been somewhere between 45 and 60.

Last week I somehow managed to reach 80. I’m not sure how.

Well that’s not exactly true – it happened because I held over last week’s long run until Monday morning, due to a minor smoke problem.

I’m just not sure how I managed to do it without injury. I feel completely happy and strong and miraculously healthy. Far healthier than earlier in the week.

Yesterday’s long run was one of those joyful, effortless experiences you have when you just seem to glide along. I ran 27k and, if it wasn’t for a rather brutal hill on Eastfield Road just before home, I could have run for another 5-10 quite easily.

I guess I’ll file the experience under “don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth” and move on. At this rate, my preparation for the Marathon 2007 is well on track.

it’s beginning to look a bit like…

Right now, mid December, is about the best time of the year.

I know I have some work to do before my time off, but I also know it’ll be pretty slack and it won’t go for long. I’ve been going around buying some last minute presents, which is probably better than actually getting them on the day.

The day itself seems like something to look forward to at the moment, despite the fact I know I’ll just feel bloated and vaguely irritated at all the idiotic conversation thrown around between the extended family (most of it coming out of my mouth, of course).

What was it that guy from the Simpsons said “better than the act, better than the aftermath – the moment of anticipation!”. Of course, he was talking about making love to Patti and/or Selma, which just goes to show how wrong you can be.

So what do I want for christmas? About 15 points for my beloved Charlton Athletic, who have suffered miserably in recent months. Oh, and some nice time off with the family. That’ll do.

Goofy theory no 1 for today
(I have many goofy theories)

Early morning runs hurt less.

No, really, it’s true. Also they don’t seem to tire me out quite as much. I think this is because I’m at least 56% asleep and don’t notice what’s going on.

This cuts both ways, though. The catastrophic crash and burn rate rises markedly when I get over 50% sleepiness.

Okay – so let’s revise my goofy theory. I’m nothing if not flexible.

Early morning runs hurt less hurt just as much, but not ’til later.

Running

12k this morning around Croydon and Ringwood. Technically 53k for the week so far, but I want to claim Monday morning’s run as part of last week, which was otherwise pretty low. So I’ll claim 37k and aim to put in around 20 – 25 on Sunday morning.

starship JH

No, today’s post has nothing to do with Jefferson Starship, Jefferson Airplane or whatever they used to call themselves. Although I might write something in the near future. I like that song “we built this city (on rock and roll)”. Great fist-pumping stuff in a dreadfully 80s sort of way.

Back to the point JH, back to the point. Ah, where were we?

Ah yes, that’s it. I’ve found a wonderful site on the interweb – Jeff Russell’s STARSHIP DIMENSIONS. And isn’t it just a wonderful thing? It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to shake your head in stunned disbelief.

If you haven’t been there, and can’t be bothered following the link above, basically what the site does it present drawings, to scale, of all your favourite space-ships from various sci-fi shows so you can compare them against one another.

Now, if you’re saying to yourself “I don’t have a favourite space-ship”, well I say “that’s what you think!”.

Who could resist doing something like this:

That’s right, it’s an evil camel-robot-thingamajig from the Empire Strikes Back compared with a 747. And it’s all to scale and completely accurate. Fictional, but accurate. And it can all be done with some beautiful click-and-drag action.

The only bad thing is that the click-and-drag stuff doesn’t seem to work in Firefox. You’ll have to use the browser of the beast AKA Internet Explorer.

Running

12 possibly unwise kilometres this morning. No pain and stiffness, so possibly last night was just a panic?

all well and good

Well this interweb business is all well and good, but it has its drawbacks. Namely the lack of a properly functioning spellcheck, which accounts for the dubious spelling in the heading of yesterday’s entry. Not the body, the damn heading. Or should I say the “dang” heading. Thank you Mr Rudd.

Moving on, if you were sitting behind me as I write this, you’d see me rubbing my own leg. Not in a good way though, it’s the kind of rubbing you do when you’re trying to kid yourself you don’t have the beginnings of an injury.

That’s the way I usually deal with things going wrong with my body – pretend it doesn’t exist until and unless I pass out.

Bearing that in mind, I’ll just ask my consious mind to look the other way for a minute. Go on conscious mind – why not have a look at the onion for this week.

Ah good. He’s gone.

This morning I felt a soreness behind my right knee on my morning run. I was able to run through it without too much trouble. However sitting at my desk for a few hours made me feel rather stiff, sore and oldman-ish. Maybe it’ll pass. In the meantime I’ve diagnosed myself with “oldmanitis of the knee”.

Okay conscious mind, you can come back now.

So it was a perfectly pleasant, injury free 13k this morning taken at a relatively brisk pace.

Now, I think people like a girl running may have got the wrong idea reading this blog: when I say “relatively brisk” I mean relative to a snail. Don’t picture me as some Kenyan guy with legs up to the armpits capable of covering 30ks in an hour. Well, you can if you want I suppose, but if you do end up meeting me in person it’s bound to be a bit of a disappointment.

feeling queezy

It was a decidedly ordinary weekend, this one just passed. Everyone in Melbourne suddenly had the experience of being a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker, whether they liked it or not.

Now I used to be a pretty heavy smoker, and even back then I don’t recall being quite as short of breath. Then again, I probably didn’t ever try to run 20k back then.

Actually I didn’t try to run on the weekend either. Even I wasn’t that stupid. Instead I bunkered down in the house for the weekend, watching DVDs and getting steadily more sweaty and grumpy.

I don’t mind getting sweaty when I’m out there running, but I resent sweating just sitting still on the couch.

Well, anyway, things started to pick up last night as a mild-ish cool change came through. This morning I took advantage of the relatively benign conditions, and ambled along for 17ks or so. The post-run buzz kicked in post-run, naturally enough, and life began to look more rosy.

However, it turns out it wasn’t the sort of rosiness that lasts all day. It was the sort of rosiness that just distracts you while fate is creeping up behind you to give you a big kick up the bum.

Today’s b.k.u.t.b. came in the form of a story on theage.com.au, who report that Cherie Booth/Blair has apparently posed nude for a painting. I was going to include a picture, but I thought better of it. This is, after all, a family sort of blog. Also, some of you might be reading this eating your cornflakes…

Instead, I’ll just provide a link to the website, and if you are a glutton for punishment or have a strong constitution, you can peruse the story at your leisure. I can’t take responsibility for what’s on the Age’s site. Don’t say I didn’t warn you – here it is.

Great…. Apart from the exceedingly unfortunate image that will be forever burnt on my mental retina, I can foresee about 30 emails per day offering me the chance to see “Going down on Downing street” or “Blair does Bush”. Actually, those work pretty well, maybe I have a hitherto unknown aptitude for porn movie titles. Perhaps a new career?