gruesome

I’ve just been reading this story on the Age about Bob Woolmer:

Murdered Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer was poisoned before being strangled, rendering him powerless to fight back against his killer

Geez…. these Pakistani-cricket-coach murderers don’t mess around do they? It’s a wonder they didn’t have him hung-drawn and quartered while they were at it.

Another slightly unpleasant death in the news is this guy, who died after running the London Marathon the weekend before last. There’s a bit of controversy on Cool Running at the moment about whether they guy died because of too little water, or too much water and wether he was fit, or superfit, or some kind of slob.

Anyway you slice it, it’s pretty scary. Still, they’ve only had 9 deaths in 25 years. They probably have tens of thousands of entrants every year, so the odds are still pretty good.

Touch wood.

I have no intention of leaving famous last words on this, or any other, blog.

Running
8k on saturday followed by some downhill strides. Then a long run yesterday taken reasonably quickly – 37.something all up in 2hours 50. Not too bad I suppose.

fleeced sheep

One of those stories I really want to believe are true (and I won’t hear anyone telling me otherwise):

Thousands of people have been ‘fleeced’ into buying neatly coiffured lambs they thought were poodles.

Entire flocks of lambs were shipped over from the UK and Australia to Japan by an internet company and marketed as the latest ‘must have’ accessory.

But the scam was only spotted after a leading Japanese actress said her ‘poodle’ didn’t bark and refused to eat dog food.

Read the full story at Metro.co.uk

Running
13k last night, including some tempo work. 3 lots of 8 minutes with 3 minutes slower recovery between reps. I did it with the old shoes, which thankfully still feel pretty good. In the past I’ve had new pairs of shoes that make the old ones feel unwearable.

new shoes

I’ve finally pushed the boat out and bought a new pair of runners. Hooray.

My cunning business brain noticed Amart allsports were selling Brooks Adrenaline GTS 7 for $10 cheaper than Rebel Sports. So I trooped into Rebel in QV on Tuesday arvo and walked out 10 minutes later with a new pair under my arms, taking advantage of RS’ 10% off competitor’s price thingy.

I felt pretty pleased with myself, as you might expect. In fact, I have a notion I may have actually said “Gotcha!!!!” to the sales girl in the shop. My gloating demeanour may have backfired slightly though. I don’t think she was too pleased. She flat-out refused to give me the red version, citing some extremely dubious fine-print.

Petty, I call it.

But there you go – a new pair of shoes. They’re damn ugly. Boring, blue, grey, white. Ho hum.
But they’re pretty comfortable; unlike most Brooks shoes I’ve run in, they actually have some sort of cushioning. Must be the “Mogo“, I guess.

I wonder who came up with that name? It’s one of the more dorky things I’ve ever heard.

Joke
Speaking of dorky things. How about this for a joke:

Q: At a monster party, who’s the best dancer?
A: The boogie monster

My god, I am so turning into my Dad. I might as well go the whole hog: buy a checked shirt and loafers and take up golf.

Running
18.something ks yesterday arvo in the new shoes. About 5min/k pace. Ho hum.

long run lapper

I read recently there are something like 70 million blogs in the world. That’s one of those numbers that makes you feel very small, like looking up at the stars or standing next to Kim Beasley.

I also read that only about 30-40% of those blogs are actually regularly updated. With that in mind it’s good to welcome back to the fold Clarkey, of Ausrun and Clarkey’s chronicles fame. That particular blog seemed to disappear from the face of the earth for a while, but he’s back writing regularly now.

Anyway, I’ve mentioned him today because yesterday he accused me of being a “long run lapper”, not without a hint of exhasperation in his blogging voice.

Fair call, Clarkey. You got me.

I do tend to prefer doing laps on my long run. I don’t go as far as doing dozens of laps of an athletics track, but once I’ve mapped out and measured a route, I’m pretty happy to do it again and again. If I get bored, I’ll just do it backwards.

To someone who likes a bit of scenery to look at, I dare say it’s a bit boring, but that’s missing the point. The whole idea is to get to some zen level of boredom and thereby to attain enlightenment and/or unconsciousness. Ask anyone who likes test cricket: it’s strangely compelling.

Running
A 12k (lap) run this morning, including a whole series of fartlek things over “rolling hills”. About two thirds of the way through I remember saying to myself (not out loud, I haven’t gotten to that point yet) “Why am I doing this?”

The answer came back straight away “Self-hatred. You desire to punish yourself for some sin in a previous life.”

Righty-oh then.

beige

A very quick post today, as I’m not only wasting time during work hours, but wasting time during a terribly informative seminar…..

I talked, flippantly, on Friday of a “slight stiffness” in the hip. Truth be told, it was a fair bit more than “slight stiffness”. Actually there was a fair bit of standing on the side Maroondah Highway, rubbing the leg and cursing bitterly.

So, Saturday, there was no running whatsoever. Just some house-work and general handimanishness. The bathroom is now painted a lovely shade of Manhattan beige. Not exactly the colour I would have chosen, but that’s not up to me.

Sunday dawned bright, well, er, it dawned, and anyway I was feeling okay. So I head out for a ginger, delicate, slow long run along the Mullum Mullum creek. It turned out okay – 3 laps, plus some faffing about at then. It turned out to be 34k. 34 slow km, but 34k nonetheless.

Generally, pretty heatwarming. It’s good to know I can run over 30k almost effortlessly and good to know the hip thing doesn’t hold me back too much.

Football
The big game on Saturday night was a bit of a disappointment. It was 1-1. It could be worse I suppose. We could have lost. But the general feeling around the place is a bit gloomy. Oh well.

Jaykay, you’re now one of the good guys again. I’m not one to hold a grudge.

spruikers are evil

I know, I know, I can hear you saying:

Yes, yes, we’ve all been on Swanston Street walk, we know they’re annoying. It’s old news…

The thing is, I’m not talking about ordinary spruikers, with the microphones and stuff. I’m talking about the sneaky ones you see these days around the traps. They’re the groups of attractive youngsters, uni age mostly, who pop out at you without warning, beaming and saying “Hi, how’s it going?” at you.

It’s sneaky and underhanded, because the normal, instinctive human reaction is to say “Hi” back and slow down to talk to them. Especially when the really sneaky ones make it seem like you’ve already met.

The thing is, they’re evil. I don’t care who they work for, Amnesty International, WWF (not the wrestling one) or anyone. They’re all evil.

Because of them, I’ve now started to adopt an attitude of hostility and aggression to absolutely everyone I meet on the street. I have no other choice. It’s the only way to avoid unpleasant conversations.

It didn’t go down too well with my grandmother the other day, but what are you going to do?

Music
I used to regularly write about music on this blog, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent months. Just one of those things, I guess.

I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff that could be categorised as “alt-country”. If you were thinking that mixing alternative and C&W sounds like a dubious idea, well you’d be right. However there are some exceptions.

Uncle Tupelo and their various offspring (Wilco etc) are one of those. A song of theirs called “Fatal wound” has been running around my head for days now. It’s so laid back, it’s almost horizontal and has some, er, enigmatic lyrics. But I like it. The singer (Jeff Tweedy) has just enough charisma to carry it off:

Columns of sunlight
Glorious cities
Oceans of opportunity
All your decisions seem ancient.

I’m not sure what that means either, but it sounds good.

Football
My posting on the English Premier League brought some interesting responses.

Jaykay outed herself as a Sheffield supporter (is that a “blade”?) and hence is the enemy, at least for the next 3 days.

AJH admitted supporting West Ham, a club with all the money in the world, but who still can’t stay out of trouble. Steve admitted being a Red Devil, so his team has all the money in the world and causes trouble for everyone else. The buggers.

Running
16 this morning. Not much to say. I bit of tightness in the hip region, but nothing to get too worked up about.

aha! I thought so

According to the US Runner’s World, New research says there are benefits to running before dawn or after dark–even if you don’t have to.

Well yeah, I’ve done a bit of that in the past few months and I’ve come to quite like running in the pre-dawn. Why? Well:

• it’s coolest just before the dawn so you don’t go into mid-summer meltdowns
• it’s quiet
• when there’s a full moon it’s beautiful and you don’t need a torch
• it gives you a wonderful time to think away from all distractions
• no-one can see your pathetic attemps at intervals

You might think the guy they interviewed for that article on Runner’s World, Tom Goulet, got a bit carried away:

It’s almost as peaceful as sleeping

I actually agree with him, but that’s only because I my dreams invariably centre around running ultra marathons barefoot pursued by unspeakable monsters. So in that sense, running at night is relatively peaceful.

Football
I like to consider myself a bit of a renaissance man, but which I mean I have a whole series of bizarrely trivial, useless and disconnected talents and interests.

It’s all well and good being able to play 17 of the Goldberg Variations on the piano, being able to cook the best lasagne this side of Provence and having an in depth knowledge of deceased singer-songwriters from the 1960s. But it doesn’t impress the chicks, and there aren’t too many high paying gigs out there for someone like me.

One of my useless fields of knowledge revolves around the English Premier League, particularly a team called Charlton Athletic. They are usually described in the press as “strugglers” or “unfashionable” and were even used as a punchline for a joke on SBS a few weeks ago.

Well we (Charlton) have a v. big game this weekend. Very big. It’s against, fellow strugglers, Sheffield United, and if we lose we’ll probably go down to the “Championship”, which isn’t as impressive as it sounds. It will cost us millions in lost tv rights.

So cross your fingers and anything else you might have handy.

Running
A 13k jaunt around the city and inner suburbs this morning, including what can very loosely be described as anaerobic threshold work. Very loosely.

so hip, it’s painful

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this about life, but it’s true, it’s not very much like the movies.

That’s mostly a good thing. He’s all over Hollywood movies like a rash, but it’s not often in real life you bump into Tom Cruise and his child-bride at a party or in the queue at Aldi. Also, being shot at, beaten up or otherwise physically assaulted by Arnold Shwarzenegger is actually a pretty rare occurrance, at least in my line of work.

It’s also true to say life doesn’t have much in common with lyrics from top 20 songs.

Let me give you an example:

At about this time yesterday morning, I sat down to pen a heartfelt cry of despair to the heartless creator and god of all things running (much like Scriabin‘s first piano sonata, funnily enough), for allowing my hip to self-destruct 6 weeks before a marathon. “How could you do this to me, hip?” was the general message. I believe I even wrote “AAAAARRRGGGHH”.

Little did I know, even as I sat typing up those well-phrased but desparate cries of agony, my hip was quietly, furtively even, knitting itself together. By the time the news had gotten out to the small flock of fellow runners, I was almost back to normal.

Yes, it turns out unlike Shakira, my hips DO lie. To be accurate, my left hip lies, and quite convincingly, I might add.

I believe I mentioned a thigh soreness, did I? Anyway, that seems to have miraculously cleared itself up too. Add my left thigh to the list of body parts whose honesty is less than perfect.

As far as I’m aware, Shakira hasn’t used the medium of song to comment on the honesty of HER thighs, or any other quality they might posess. I fear, though, it’s only a matter of time.

Running
12 very easy, very slow ks this morning, punctuated by lots of rubbing and stretching of the hip region. It took about an hour, which is v. slow for me.