the big day

Lately I’ve been a bit of a mysterious hinter, both here and on other forums. It’s been pretty clear something’s going on, and it has something to do with this weekend, but I’ve kept more or less mum.

The whole mysterious hinting thing has been part of my plan to appear enigmatic, mysterious and devilishly attractive. It worked didn’t it?

No, I thought not. I can’t have that picture on my profile and be devilishly attractive. It’s an either/or thing.

The other side of it is that the big secret, such as it is, involves members of my family, who have some right to privacy.

So what’s the big story then? Oh, didn’t I mention that?

I’m getting married this weekend. Saturday, to be precise. At an undisclosed location near the beach. The location has been disclosed, obviously, but only to invitees, and I suppose the celebrant.

The whole shebang has been a while in the planning. The engagement was over 12 months ago, but other events (another m. hint) prevented any serious planning being done until a bit before last christmas.

As is, I believe, traditional, we started out “only wanting a small wedding” and ended up with something more elaborate than I thought possible. We haven’t gone as far as making guests sign oaths of secrecy, and we haven’t sold the picture rights to New Idea, Bec and ‘lil Leyton style. But, do me a favour, don’t mention it to my other half or any members of her family.

The whole thing is like a finely-tuned machine, except without the “finely-tuned” bit. “Machine” probably isn’t completely accurate either.

It should be okay but just in case, cross your fingers and toes, throw salt over your shoulder like it’s going out of fashion and touch anything wooden you may have at hand. If you’ve come to this site via a porn site, ignore that last bit about wood. That’s probably not good luck.

So anyway, as of 2:55 saturday arvo, all things going to plan, the other half will be promoted to “missus” and I will become “hubby”. Sounds good eh?

Running
13 steady ks this morning, including 6 downhill strides at the end. I’m starting to get back to mid-season form after the recent bout with dog-flu (bigger and hairier than bird-flu).

I have a fairly heavy couple of weeks scheduled next, training wise. I may have to be a touch creative with the scheduling – moving the long run to Monday etc. as the missus and I have slightly differing opinions on what constitutes a relaxing honeymoon.

Blogging
I may have mentioned earlier – I’m getting married this weekend. There’s a chance I’ll be a little sporadic with my blogging the next couple of weeks. If you want to know how it all goes check back every couple of days or so or add this blog to your bloglines, or RSS reader.

a good long run

It’s been a little while since I last posted. Apologies, gentle Jruns readers. You’re entitled to expect better from your humble correspondent. In future I will try harder.

So what’s been happening? Well, for one thing, it was the weekend; a time when, amongst other things, I am blessedly free of all things web-related. I have even been known to go without looking at a computer for days on end. True.

Also, I’ve needed to get my running mojo back, after a simply horrid week struggling with the flu.

In retrospect, it may have been wiser not to struggle so hard. I’m thinking particularly of an ill-advised 10k run last Wednesday, and an even more ill-advised 14k the following day. Neither of these really helped my recovery a great deal. In fact, I felt positively nauseous for most of last week.

Ah well, we live and learn. Or at least we live.

I finally saw sense last Friday and took the day off.

Saturday was much better. I had a very pleasing hill session, using the mobile phone to time 2 minute up-hill sections. Quite fun.

Yesterday I met a couple of guys from the Eastern Suburbs Running Group at Croydon Athletics track for a nice long run. The weather was good, the gods were in alignment and for once everything worked.

I think it’s been at least 2 weeks since I had an enjoyable run, it’s been pretty much a hard slog.

Yesterday was a real exception though. 31.7k done at around 5 minutes per k pace. I felt pretty good for most of it, with the exception of a section in Nunawading when I could feel my blood-sugar dropping. I pushed through it, and perked up a little later when we ran through a light shower.

Everything’s back on track, touch wood (and anything else you may have at hand).

english surrender-monkeys

I don’t envy whoever’s doing John Howard’s speechwriting at the moment. They must wake up every morning just dreading having to go to the office. Every time the phone rings, they must flinch.

It seems every day the Iraq thing just gets worse for our glorious leader, and I’m not even talking about the actual killing and bombing on the ground. Every day the original justifications get more discredited, and the explanations get more torturous and twisted. What’s more, every other one of the “allies” jumps ship.

It must be hard, selling our “policy”.

The latest ship-jumper is of course Tony Blair, who will shortly pull out a whole heap of soldiers. Howard and co’s response has been to say that:

• the Brits are pulling soldiers out for the same reason we’re sending more. Work that one out.
• we knew it was happening anyway. It’s all part of the plan.

Yeah right, I believe it….

So let’s get this straight – a staged withdrawal is a “staged surrender”. That was last week’s theory. Extending that idea just a bit makes Tony Blair a cheese-eating surrender monkey, just like his colleagues across the channel. But he’s English so does that make him a warm-beer-drinking surrender monkey?

And if the government has known about it for so long, why was Downer on Lateline on Tuesday saying:

it’s not good enough for Australia to say to the Americans and the British and others, you do the job, we’re not going to do it because it’s not polling very well

Isn’t that exactly what Blair is doing?

Running
An improved effort this morning. I did 14k, which counts as this week’s mid-week long run. Probably not race fit, but the strength is coming back to me, bit by bit. The lungs don’t protest as much.

I’m still catching up with this week’s training after the flu early this week. Tomorrow’s rest day will have to wait. I’ll do the 10k hill session instead. The only session I’ll really miss this week is an 8k recovery run. No big deal.

back in running shoes

We male-of-the-species types may be less deadly than our female counterparts, but when it comes to being sick, we can whinge with the best of them. Yesterday’s post is a prime example, complaining about coughing, wheezing, IKEA-ing and god knows what else.

Today I’m back at work, and allegedly better, so I’m determined to look on the bright side of things.

On the plus side, I’m having a bit of fun at work answering the phone sounding like Stephen Hawking with emphysema, especially as I work for a health website. Black humour, I know, but you gotta take what you can get.

Running
When the alarm went off this morning I had serious misgivings, and not just the usual “christ it’s bloody 5am” sort. The sensible little man in my head was having a great old time telling me:

You spent half the night hacking up your lungs, you’re not ready to run.

Regular JRuns readers will know I don’t have much time for that sort of advice. This morning was no exception. The little man was particularly insistent so I mentally placated him by saying

It’s just a little run. I won’t go far, and I won’t go fast

To which the little man replied:

Yeah right

But by that stage it was too late. I was already out running. It wasn’t so bad. I did a steady 10k plus some strides at the end. It’s probably fair to say I wasn’t exactly brimming over with speed and acceleration at the end, but that’s okay.

I’ve lost 2 days of training, but I’m still okay in terms of overall ks, and I can make up the difference in coming weeks.

sick as a dog

Groan, sniffle, cough, repeat. That’s pretty much all I’ve managed to do for the last couple of days.

It all started on Saturday, at a working-bee down at Venus Bay. It wasn’t such a great idea, cutting down about 30 trees and dragging them to the tip on a 38 degree day. Hard work.

I made it back to Melbourne that night; sore, tired, a trifle sunburnt and lacerated in a dozen places, but more or less in one piece. I woke up on Sunday feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. A truck called “influenza”.

So I’ve been feeling sorry for myself ever since.

My other half, bless her, figured yesterday would be a great time to go to IKEA. Now obviously, there is no such thing as a good time to go to IKEA, but if there was, yesterday would not have been it. There’s something about standing around, out of your mind on Sudafed, arguing about whether or not we “need” a fry-pan galled “grillle” that makes life seem not worth living.

Anyhoo, today I feel a bit better, so I’ll go back to work tomorrow. My friendly, oh so competent, GP has given me a doctor’s certificate with a diagnosis of “medical condition”. I kid you not.

Running
I had a good 10k run at Venus Bay on Saturday, but nothing since. I’ve only really missed the one run though, so it’s not too bad. I’ll try to run tomorrow morning, or evening if I can’t manage that.

Football
Congratulations to the Melbourne Victory. I’m not sure how you can have a more impressive season than that. And to the folks up at SBS in Sydney – now that Melbourne has won everything, and is by any standard the team in the A League, don’t you think it’s time you stop referring to Sydney as the “glamour team” of the league?

Rest day

Today is that most rare and beautiful of occasions – a rest day. A day when, theoretically, I could sleep past 5am and could go on about my business without the need to be forever clutching at various bodily parts below my waist. (No, that doesn’t mean what you think, keep your mind out of the gutter please)

Of course, the thing is, screaming babies and other family members/neighbours don’t pay much attention to things theoretical. Still, as I sit here skiving off at work, I feel better knowing despite how I actually feel, theoretically I’m a lot better than this time yesterday, if that makes any sense.

So, no running today, and only a faint possibility of something over the weekend, heatwave permitting. I feel at a loss.

So what’s going on in the world? There must be something happening, surely.

Company on hills

Yesterday, if you recall, I did the weekly long slow run, with emphasis on the word “slow”. There seemed to be some sort of fault between the heart, brain, lungs and legs which affected the ability to move at a speed above “arthritic snail.”

I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear the old faulty machine performed a little better this morning.

Today I sheduled myself a quick hill session, perhaps feeling subconcsiously that a little penance was in order. A 1.5k warmup was followed by 4 laps of a little course of ups and downs. Despite what I was feeling towards the end, I quite like the course. I quite like doing laps, for one thing as for some reason it seems to go faster.

I made it home around 6:30, drenched in honest sweat, well – sweat, but feeling okay.

As I as saying to my Dad on the phone last night, these days you catch me at my best at 6:30am. Of course, the adrenaline has completed worn off by 7:30 when I’m on the train, slumped up against some overweight office-worker. Ick.

Company
It may surprise you to learn that Eastfield road near Ringwood East station is quite the hive of activity at 5:30 in the morning. There’s the local paperboy/man (he’s old enough to drive a car at least) who is a positive menace. The road rules obviously don’t apply to him, neither the rules of physics, or so it seems.

I also saw about 10 different runners/walkers this morning. What’s going on? Don’t they know I run at that time and place so no-one will see my pitiful excuse for running? Why don’t they leave me in peace?

There’s one runner in particular who I have seen a couple of times before, although I wouldn’t recognise him in daylight. This morning I almost had a head-on collision with him as I veered around a parked van. Probably my fault. Sorry Ringwood East running man, if you’re out there.

Also, there are plenty of cars, all of whom seemed to be big fans of the old high-beam. It seemed everytime I got close to the crest of a hill I would be blinded by an oncoming car.

feeling ordinary

Ah the glorious uncertainty of life as a runner eh? That’s why we love it. I’m not a machine. If I was a machine I would be the type that breaks down 5 minutes after the warrantee runs out.

So, unlike a machine, I have my good days and my bad days. Actually, that’s a bit like my car, but I shall ignore that and move swiftly on. Sunday’s long run surprised me with how easy it was to run 29k at just over 4.30 pace up hill and down dale. This morning’s run was something else altogether.

I, cannily, have cast my discerning eye over the long-range weather forecast and spied some nasty figures on the horizon this weekend. I have no great desire to be running long distances in 38 degree heat. In fact, I probably won’t feel like running to answer the phone.

But I did feel like running this morning, so I set out a little earlier than normal and covered 18k in lieu of my normal long run. What a stupid decision. From start to finish I felt crap. C.R.A.P. Tired, listless, lacking fire and zap. Strangely, the only bearable bits were the uphills. On the flat and down sections I could have doubled as a snail. A snail auditioning for the Biggest Loser, with a stitch.

Ah, man.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I tripped on a root and went flying A over T. Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear I have some practice at running accidents. This morning I executed a rather elegant mid-air turn and roll which would have been impressive if there was anyone there to see it.

Speaking of elegant: