childish

I woke before the dawn today, and sat for a while eating my rice bubbles at the kitchen table, reading The Complete Book of Running by James Fixx, the chapter about race tactics.

It’s pretty hard to concentrate at that time of day, but something about that book must have percolated into my subconscious as, by the time I made it into work and out for a run, I was behaving in quite a racy way.

Firstly, the pace was quite fast. Secondly, I spotted another runner about 400 metres ahead of me on the Yarra trail and made it my business to catch him up. He was making good time, so it took a little while.

I passed him feeling quite strong and breathing well, and I was pleased to hear him breathing a bit heavily. At that point, Mr Fixx’s teaching kicked in and something chimed up in the back of my mind “When you pass him, pass him decisively!”.

I know what you’re thinking – it’s not a race. Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I did pass him fairly strongly and kicked ahead by about 10 to 15 metres. So, I was a bit shocked when, 5 minutes later, I could still hear his footsteps behind me. He was gaining on me!

Thankfully, I still felt good and had plenty of gas in the tank. I let him almost catch me: I could hear his breathing almost on the back of my neck.

Then we passed under Swan street and turned left into a slight uphill section and I kicked into a sprint. Well, as close to a sprint as I could manage.

Anyway, I think that lost him.

Still, pretty childish on my behalf. I felt kinda bad afterward.

Running
17.35km this morning, including silly macho racing tactics in 75 minutes. It felt pretty good overall.

back on form

After a fairly cruddy run on Tuesday, I was a bit nervous about last night’s run. Had I lost my mojo? Would I cope with the relative warmth? Gosh, I’m tired and I haven’t even started!

Anyway, I set out from home around 7:30 pointed the toes in the direction of the bottom of the street and, to my great relief, all was in order. The legs worked, the lungs and heart functioned adequately, the brain was somewhere off over the horizon.

Luckily the brain isn’t required for running to any great degree. In fact, it’s probably best if, at the start of a run, you DON’T think about what you’re about to do. Just let it happen.

So, 19.55km, a whole bunch of hills and just under 90 minutes later, I was home, happy and sweating the sweat of an honest runner.

All good once again.

running low

The days when we all had brand new plasma screens funded by flogging off stuff dug up in Western Australia to China already seem long ago.

Now it seems we’re running low on a number of fronts.

Eastlink, the whiz-bang new freeway that opened a few months ago is already deeply in debt and fending off the creditors. Apparently it already owes 1.9 billion. Gosh. It’s only been open a few months.

I have my own theories about why this is so. There’s a pretty fundamental problem with the road that’s never been addressed, namely the start and finish. It starts up near my place at Ringwood and finished down somewhere in Frankston, from what I’m told. Now, I live in Ringwood (Ringwood East to be precise) but I’m not at all keen to pay money to drive there, and I’m certainly in no hurry to PAY to drive to Frankston.

As a guide, up until a few years ago, thousands of people used to pay upwards of $100 to run AWAY from Frankston. They called it the Melbourne Marathon, but I know better.

Now, if they had have extended the freeway a touch on either end, things would have been far more appealing:

“Fancy a trip to the Yarra Valley for lunch darling?”
“Sure, we can have lunch at a winery!”

Or:

“How do you feel about a trip down to Portsea darling?”
“Sounds divine! Let’s take that lovely new toll road. Spare no expense!”

See!

On a slightly different topic, we’re rapidly running out of water, so our friendly lords and masters in Spring Street are encouraging us all to use no more than 155 litres per person per day. That shouldn’t be too hard, as long as it doesn’t include beer.

Running
Something of a low run this morning too. It was only a VERY INSISTENT alarm clock that got me out of bed this morning. I ended up with 13.7km in an hour, but it didn’t feel good. It was one of those runs when you can’t wait for a traffic light to go to red so you can have a rest, or possibly a quick nap.

Oh well. I can take the smooth with the rough.

I’m trying not to take this personally

But it’s difficult. You see, I’ve been stood up twice today already.

Twice. By different people!

This morning, it was A/M, who I was supposed to meet in the city before work for a brief easy recovery run. For me, it was recovery from yesterday’s long run, for A/M a recovery from a no-doubt debauched weekend.

Anyway, I hauled my rusting carcass out of bed specially early and into work on the dawn train, only to see a text message begging off on some spurious grounds. Something about a wardrobe malfunction involving bike pants.

I suppose no run is better than a pantless one.

Then, later in the morning, one of my eager co-workers wanted to come for a run with me. I said sure, despite being somewhat wary of him: he’s 19 and can run 400 metres in 50 seconds flat.

Anyway, come 11:30 he told me he wasn’t coming. When I asked him why he just said “It’s because I’m lazy.”

At least he’s honest I suppose.

Running
12.73km, ON MY OWN. It was an easy recovery run up through Carlton and Brunswick and back via Royal Park. The legs are feeling okay; they still looking stumpy and appalling, but they feel okay.

dear reader

It’s been some time since last I put the quill to parchment, or whatever it is I do these days. I think it was Wednesday afternoon, and I was looking forward to an invigorating 18km that evening.

I did run the 18km despite feeling a distinct lack of motivation. The second half was faster than the first, mainly because it started pissing down and I wanted to get somewhere dry quick-smart. In the end, I was about as wet as the ocean and looked something like a drowned rat dressed in light blue New Balance running gear.

I’m SO attractive.

The following day, I came down with an inevitable cold.

Joy.

It wasn’t too bad and I only ended up missing two scheduled runs. Still, this morning it had been almost 4 days between runs and I was pretty grumpy. I was casting aspersions willy-nilly and devil take the hindmost.

So, this afternoon, I headed out for a restful 32.3km around the local streets. I say “local”, but I made it as far as the corner of Burwood Highway and Springvale road before turning in the homeward direction. (Incidentally, there’s a pub on that corner called the Burvale – I only just today realised where they got the name. How dumb am I?)

Considering I was still a bit snuffly and the wind was doing what the wind does best, it wasn’t too bad. Just on 2 hours 30 minutes.

Some hot girls in a SAAB beeped at me on Dorset Road, Croydon, which I thought was pretty exciting until I realised the hot girls where actually my mother-in-law and her other half.

Oh well.

Medical matters
Never fear, I’m not going to burden you with my blisters or chafing. Nothing unpleasant.

My mother-in-law has a machine that measures you blood pressure for you. It’s great for all the hypochondriacs out there.

Anyway, I had a go, and my blood pressure was fine. The thing was, it also reads your heart rate, and mine was only 45 beats per minute.

Is that low?

hungry

I have a pretty good appetite, normally. Put almost anything in front of me, at any time, and I’ll usually have a bit of a taste. But I don’t ever feel really hungry, really RAVENOUS. Horses have nothing to fear from me.

In the last four weeks so I’ve managed to fit in a fair bit of running – 87km, 89km, 101km, 91km – and this week looks like another big one. Through all of that my appetite has stayed pretty consistent.

But this week I’ve suddenly become REALLY hungry. Starving. I come home from work and do an impression of the Tassie the Tasmanian Tiger, hoovering up everything in the larder.

I’ve managed to avoid the choccie biccies so far, but it’s only a matter of time.

Running
14.7km yesterday after work. It was done at about 4:20 minute per km pace, so almost a tempo session. There was a good 8 or 10k traffic-light free session along the Yarra trail that probably was a proper tempo bit – I reckon I was hitting 4 minute ks pretty regularly.

All good.

A mid-week long run scheduled tonight.

Emiliana Torrini
I went to see her last night at the forum. Em seems to find her twee. I wouldn’t go so far as that, but she did walk a fine line between unbelievably cute and twee. She was very impressed with the size of the Forum and kept saying between songs “ooooh… stadiom”.

Still, with an Icelandic accent, it’s hard not to sound cute.

I’m not sorry

Old John Howard had something of a stumbling block about the “s” word, particularly when it related to Aboriginal people, but for most of the rest of us, we can’t stop saying sorry.

We brush arms against someone in the hall, “sorry”. We ask if we can borrow a pen “sorry, but ….”. We complain when being beaten “sorry, but you’re stepping on my face”.

I’m only half joking. Pay attention, and you’ll see people saying sorry all the time.

Well, I’ve had it. We can’t possibly be sorry for everything.

I’m going to come up with something new to say. Any suggestions?

Running
None yet, but I have an hour to kill after work, so I’ll head out for a brief jog.

Music
I’m off to see Emiliana Torrini play tonight at the Forum.

Should be good.

no rest for me

It seems I’ve been particularly wicked this past week. I’m not sure what it was, but something was positively demonic.

What am I talking about?

Well… for the past 6 weeks or so, I’ve been doing these long steady distance (LSD) runs on Sunday mornings, all around the 30-34km mark. If you’ve ever done one of those, you’ll know they can take it out of you a bit. So, on Monday’s I’ve been doing nice, easy recovery runs – around 10km – taken at a pace to get some blood flowing and to ease stiff muscles.

No change this week – yesterday’s run was 33.4km in 2 hours 35. Today I set out for the recovery run, only to find my legs had no intention of taking it easy. They flew off, of their own accord, for 14.3k at quite a decent clip.

It was a pleasing run, actually, especially the second half which was predominantly into a stiffish, swirling headwind.

91km last week due to a missed session. Should be into 3 figures again this week.