very low key

It’s been a pretty low key week, this one just passed, in terms of running and life in general.

The previous week was full-steam ahead, all hands on deck, 75km worth of strong running. This week, life got in the way a bit. Work was busy, in ways I’m not really used to, and home was equally busy. Then when I found time to run, I was really lacking motivation, and form, pace, technique and everything else.

I ran three times during the week, and a long run today. All of which say on my running log comments column “sluggish”. Ah well, it’s done, I suppose. We took the kids down to Venus Bay on Friday night, and I was relishing a good long run down there. Sadly, I forgot my running shoes, and I wasn’t about to run 27km in Dunlop Volleys. So the long run had to be back in Melbourne, this afternoon, after a long drive home.

Ah well. Tomorrow brings a new week. Here’s hoping my mojo returns in the morning.

Running
That run I did today is here on mapmyrun.com. It was about 25km in 2 hours, which isn’t so bad considering some of the run was over hilly conditions on the side of Mount Dandenong. Still, definitely filed under “sluggish”.

Blog
I’m becoming more and more convinced as the days go on, that a move from this WordPress blog to a similar one on Tumblr is a good idea. On Tumblr, you can blog really easily, and it automatically updates Facebook and Twitter. Also, you can mess with the html and css quickly and easily, and I think it’s possible to have correctly marked-up blog posts in their WYSIWYG editor.

I already have one set up, in pretty basic form, (http://runs.tumblr.com) but I can’t get the comments to work properly. I think as soon as that happens, I’ll be moving. I’ll give you warning…

helpful hint

If you need vaseline at 6am on friday, you can buy it at the petrol station on Elgar and Whitehorse road, Box Hill.

I am in a position to know this because, (wait, this is going to shock you) I have been running. Specifically, I ran from home to work early this morning, a journey of some 27km (see mapmyrun.com).

People at work think this is all slightly insane, but it was all going pretty well for the first 45 minutes or so. However, I started to sweat a bit, and chafing began to be an issue in the downstairs department. By the time I got to Box Hill I realized I was in for something of a disaster, given I still had around 14km to go.

At the corner of Elgar road, I veered off suddenly and dived into a Quickie-mart thing attached to a petrol station like a thirsty drinker at pub closing time, desperately looking for some lubrication. And, joy of joys, I found a few jars of vaseline.

I have no idea what the poor lady at the till thought when a sweaty bloke in running gear rocked up in her shop at 6am, ecstatically clutching vaseline. To her credit, she didn’t bat an eyelid.

I then had to apply the stuff, crouching behind a handy bush, which was somewhat undignified, but necessary. I can now walk without wincing, so it’s all worth it.

effing social media

I’m struggling with social media at the moment. It’s getting me down.

Not because I can’t figure out how to use the thing, it’s just that there is too much of it. I have accounts at twitter, facebook, wordpress, I still have a google blogger login, a Wave account, SMS, youtube, google reader, google docs, myspace, linkedIn and logins to god knows how many forums and online communities.

I just about got used to all of this. I’d write a blog post, then use a thing called Tweetdeck to put a little pointer on twitter and facebook. And that would be that. Anything else would depend on the whim of the moment, and how much work I had to do.

Now there’s a thing called Buzz, which has appeared magically in my gmail which seems to be Twitter’s feral cousin. Much like a rampant weed, it sprouted above the sent items folder and has now taken upon itself to hook into google reader and most of my contacts. I’ve even managed to acquire a couple of dozen “followers” with little or no intervention on my behalf. Perhaps they liked the look of my Google profile. Somehow I doubt it.

All of this is deeply ironic, really. Despite all this relentless communication, I’m about as anti-social as it’s possible to be. In real life, I go a LONG way to avoid human interaction – hence the long solo distance running malarkey. I quite being a librarian because there was too much chatter. As far as I’m concerned, those guys you read about who lock themselves in cages and don’t speak to a soul for 50 years are on the right track.

My wife has stopped taking me to parties. If there are people there I have to talk to or, even worse, people I don’t know, I’ll be extremely uncomfortable and either get stupidly drunk or leave really early.

So…. what to do?

What I really want is one tool I can use that then feeds all the other screaming mouths of social media. I’m considering moving this blog to a thing called Tumblr. I think that might do the trick.

Has anyone else had experience of Tumblr?

Running
An easy 13km yesterday lunch-time. This morning I did another 13km, this time including a tempo section – just a lap of Albert Park lake done at a reasonable pace.

too much rich food

So, I decided roses and chocolates had kinda been done. This year, for Valentine’s day, I’d go take the lovely wife out for dinner instead.

We arranged a baby-sitter and pacified the kids and headed out to a place called the Firehouse. It’s quite a nice restaurant, and you wouldn’t be surprised to find it in, say, Carlton. Sadly, it’s on Maroondah Highway in Ringwood, and not even the nice bit – it’s in the bit next to an abandoned ute car-yard and opposite both a tattoo parlour and a maker of marble cemetery monuments.

So, minus points for atmosphere, but the food and service was pretty nice.

But not I feel totally stuffed. It’s not often I eat three courses, including a bloody massive steak (which also happened to be nicely bloody). It’s time to let out the belt buckle a couple of notches, sit in front of the TV and belch.

Running
I was all tough and alpha-male last time I wrote. This weekend I’ve been more of your pathetic 90-pound weakling type. I did 20km yesterday, but it felt awful. It wasn’t as slow as it felt (funny how that happens sometimes) but I was sore afterwards. I hardly slept last night. I wasn’t sore, but I couldn’t get comfortable.

So, I’m tired, sore and grumpy today. Not hardcore at all.

St Kilda
We went down to St Kilda today, in the car. If you’re paying attention, you’ll realise just how much foolishness is packed into those 10 words. A lot! It was the St Kilda festival, and there were about 300,000 people there packing out the place. Thankfully, we found a miraculously good parking spot, just next to the National Theatre, and quickly. 10 minutes more and there would have been murder in our family car.

I don’t much like St Kilda these days. Today about 140,000 of the festival goers seemed to be CUB types (cashed-up-bogans) in Ed Hardy and Travisty t-shirts and blonde tips with wannabe WAG girlfriends. Booooring. At least the kids had fun: paddling at the beach, listening to music and bugging us for ice cream, and I tried not to get sunburnt.

I’m so hardcore

Yes, it’s true, I’m completely hardcore. The hardcorest possible runner there is.

Last night I slept in my running gear (aside from the shoes), the alarm set for 5am.

This morning I woke up, pulled on my shoes and set out for a run, only to discover it was raining. But I still went running.

So hardcore. So tough.

An hour later and 13km down the road, including 6.8km of hill reps, and I made it home. By that stage, what had started out as an almost pleasant light drizzle had soaked through to my skin.

You know you’re wet when you can hear splashing inside your shoes, and the tips of your fingers are wrinkly, like you’ve been in the bath too long.

But did I care? Did I hell! And that’s because I’m tough, indomitable, hardcore.

You better believe it.

Running
The run this morning was based around a set of 6 reps of an approximately 600 metre hill near my place. I tried to run strongly, quickly and with good form going up, and the downhills were at an easier pace. Plus warmup and cool-down (not that cooling was much of an issue, what with the rain and all). A pleasing session.

Barnaby news
I really would like to put Barnaby Joyce behind me, but I couldn’t resist passing on this piece of wisdom, quoted in the Guardian online:

every time you open the fridge and a little light goes on, it is to remind you that Mr Rudd is taxing you and also to stop the butter from getting scared

The man is either some sort of genius, operating on a level I don’t understand, or he’s mad as a cut snake. Possibly both.

oh barnaby

How can you dislike a man called Barnaby Joyce? With a name like that, he should really be a big fluffy bunny-rabbit. “Here Barnaby, come play with your friends Fiver and Pipkin”.

The fact that he’s a straight-talkin’, cowboy-hat wearin’, rootin-tootin’ farmer from Queensland who thinks the world’s problems can be solved by a bit of old-fashioned common-sense and “don’t you worry about that” attitude, well it only partially spoils the whole bunny-rabbit-ishness.

Many of his public comments go a long way towards proving my theory about common sense – ie. it’s not all that common after-all. Barnaby, as you would expect from a fluffy bunny-rabbit, Queensland farmer politician, is not quite of this world.

That’s a bit of a problem now he’s the Shadow Minister for Finance. The title sounds impressive, but I am assured it doesn’t give him any real power, unless we decide to vote for him in sufficient numbers. But it’s not a good look for the nation’s alternative leaders to be fruitcakes (Sarah Palin, take note).

Yesterday, Barnaby released his most recent musings, in which he suggested the country was up to it’s neck in debt and would shortly by missing mortgage payments and being evicted. To where, he didn’t say, perhaps New Zealand.

This caused a stink, partly because it was plain wrong, and also because it might damage our reputation and put us down with Portugal, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Spain as bankrupt no-goodniks.

I can see that being a problem. But really, how can I hold that against Barnaby? And he still makes more sense than KRudd.

Running
13.6 slow, sweaty kilometres this morning.

back to the track

My masochistic streak has returned with a vengeance this morning. I set the alarm for 5:20am, in time for an early- morning run at the athletics track.

I should have known my stupid internal alarm clock would go off even earlier. Today it outdid itself in stupidity – waking me at 3:45 and refusing to let me go back to sleep. At least there was no problem getting out of bed at 5:20 – I was wide awake.

By 5:35 I was at the track and warming up. It was pitch black still, but luckily, navigation is quite easy on the track (this is one of the track’s few redeeming features, as far as I’m concerned).

I was very surprised to see a couple of women there before me, jogging around and around.

My session, such as it was, was 4 x 1200m with a 400m float. I remembered to bring my stop-watch, so now I now just how slow I am.

1. 4:33
2. 4:31
3. 4:39
4. 4:33

That third one was a bit slower because I was getting a bit tired and fed up with things, and also because a whole boot camp worth of people rocked up and decided to walk around the track, 3 or 4 abreast and completely oblivious to me, sweatily weaving between them.

Running
I also ran 20 warm kilometres on Sunday morning.

Sofias
If you were following my Facebook on Saturday night, firstly get a life, and secondly you would have seen my howls of rage, posted discreetly from a mobile phone hidden under the table at Sofias in Ringwood.

I’ve never been there before, and it was an experience. It was good there was a place for the kids to play, but it was past their bed-time and they were going absolutely spare.

But the food – I can’t believe how big the servings were. I had a chicken parma (sorry “pollo parma”) and I can’t believe that came from a chicken. A turkey, maybe, perhaps some sort of mutant dinosaur. They had to bring out a specially reinforced table to hold it up. And there was a whole potato plantation worth of chips.

My three year old son had some spag bol, the kids size, and it was too much for me to eat. We took it home in a doggy bag, and we’re still trying to eat it all.

How ridiculous. Who could possibly eat all of that food? And who is there heart surgeon? I swear the place is an secret audition for Australia’s Biggest Loser.

Natural remedies
I see that some popular natural remedies can be dangerous, even lethal. I have to say, I’m not surprised. I’ve often wondered why it is, that the people who worry about their diet obsessively, and take supplements left, right and centre, always look so ill.

6 degrees of perving

At some point in the recent past, somewhere in the world, someone (probably a man) managed to take some pictures of a naked lady or two. That’s a little pervy.

He (again, assuming it’s a man) put the pictures on his computer and loaded it onto a website and/or emailed it some of his friends. His friends and/or random website visitors had a bit of a look at the pictures. That’s perving at one degree of separation.

Yesterday, someone working at a financial services firm in Australia opened an email and had a click through the pictures while pretending to listen to his boss talking. That’s perving at two degrees of separation.

Unfortunately for that banker (yes, if you like, that can be rhyming slang), his desk, and computer screen happened to be highly visible in the background of a nightly news finance report. Finance news viewers, if so inclined could perve at three degrees of separation.

This story was picked up on the 7pm project, who put it on their show, which makes four degrees.

I read about the story on theage.com.au – five degrees.

You’re reading it on my blog, so you’re the 6th degree of perving separation. Congratulations.

And if you read about this on an RSS feed or something similarly new-fangled and web 2.0-ish you’re lucky 7.

And the original naked lady, she is famous beyond all imagining. She – or at least, her naked form – is having her 15 minutes as we speak. I hope she enjoys it.

What a wonderful world we live in!

Edit: it turns out the young woman is none other than Miranda Kerr, well-known “supermodel”. That still doesn’t make it right.

Running
I’ve run 3 times this week. All three have been fairly uninspiring efforts. I’ve been tired and just generally blah. Oh well.

Blog
This blog has been feeling a bit down-at-heel lately, needing a bit of a pick-me up. So, I’ve lashed out for a bit of plastic surgery, some judiciously applied makeup and a bit of primping and plumping. Also, I applied a new theme – Monochrome. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m sure it will grow on me.

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