rail trail tour

It’s been completely unplanned, believe me, but somehow I seem to have done a bit of a tour of Victoria’s rail trails in the last few months of running. A month or so ago I ran along the South Gippsland rail trail, last weekend was down at Bellarine, and today I ran on the old faithful – Lilydale-Warburton rail trail.

That wasn’t really the plan, but somehow my family arrangements meant I could be dropped at Mount Evelyn at 10am and picked up at Warburton at 12:30. Pretty good luck really, and the kind of luck you have to grab with both hands whenever it comes.

Still, it meant I had to be able to cover the distance (33km even) in 2 hours 30, including breaks and it also meant I would be without water, food and out of phone contact in case anything went wrong. Still, I was quietly confident.

The first 10km was gloriously downhill and comfortably cool, though noticeably devoid of runners. I guess it was too late in the morning for the hardcore. I had only previously been as far as Killara station, so it was all unknown after that. But I shouldn’t have worried. It was all gentle, beautiful and comfortable the whole way. I even managed to amuse some older ladies on bikes when I overtook them somewhere near Woori Yallock.

I made the distance in 2 hours 27, not the same pace as last week, but fast enough to give me time to buy a powerade before jumping in the car back to town.

Rail trails are really good for running. Long, without traffic, and any hills are of the long and gentle variety. Are there any more I should be aware of?

Movies
The lovely wife and I went to the movies on Friday night. Wow. I know, actual time out at night that didn’t involve entertainment designed for the under-fives. We saw Animal Kingdom at the Nova (very good, if you like grim, crime stuff, it’s a little like the first series of Underbelly without the uplifting family values). Unfortunately, my lovely w. decided she should remove her boots and make herself comfortable on the couch, which provoked an intense discussion about movie etiquette.

My point was that the cinema is not your living room, and that one should deport oneself in a manner befitting a public place. Her point was that I was a silly old fuddy-duddy and should just be quiet and watch the movie. An informal poll on facebook conducted in the last 24 hours would seem to support the shoe-less side of the argument, but I stand by my position.

A cure for DOMS

I think I had a bit of DOMS after the race that was not a race last weekend. The thigh muscles were aching and generally making nuisances of themselves. My knees were’my much better.

But I think I have found a cure: more running. I have run every day since and every day has gotten better.

No aches, no stiffness, all good.

Is there anything a 15km run can’t fix? 

a bit proppy

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a giraffe give birth. I haven’t, but I’ve seen it on TV, and I was thinking about it this afternoon, as I was going for my run.

I was specifically interested in the bit that happens shortly after the birth, while the newborn giraffe, still covered in various after-birth mucus-type stuff and slumped like a broken ladder on the ground, attempts to take its first halting steps.

Here’s a video, if you can’t picture it.

I can’t help but admire the effort. But at the same time, I do feel it might be better if the baby G had a rest for a little while. Christ, human babies take 12 months!

Well, anyway, that was me on my run today. Despite all the training this year, running up hill and down dale, my legs were behaving like the whole moving business was completely new to them. I was trying hard, but the whole enterprise was extremely dubious.

In the end, I managed 10 pretty slow kilometres, and I did start to feel a bit better in the last 20 minutes or so.

I guess this is what you get when you race a “training run”.

it’s not a race – Bellarine Rail Trail run

As the organiser was keen to say this morning at the start of the Bellarine Rail Trail run: “It’s not a race”.

Yeah, I get that. A couple of hundred fit looking people in running gear, all trying to run 34km as fast as they can, but it’s not a race.

Anyway, to my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter one jot whether it’s a race or not. Either way, I’m not going to win, so why worry?

So, I don’t mind saying, I raced it. Not to win, mind you, just to see how much fitness I have in the old legs. And I was pretty happy. I did, truth be told, make a fairly elementary, rookie error, and ran the first 20km too fast, but it was pretty hard to judge, running into the wind, on some muddy tracks and slightly uphill most of the way.

I stick by my general policy of running low tech, gadget free as much as possible, but on days like today I could see the benefits of having some sort of tech on my side. All around me were people beeping and blurping, gazing intently at their wrists where (no-doubt) touch-screen displays informed them of their pace, distance covered, heart rate, progress of the election count, and god knows what else, while I was tooling along trying to figure out whether we’d past the 5km mark yet. When I got to the 20km mark I thought, “Now, how long have I been running?” thinking I could work out my average pace so far, only to realise I didn’t even look at my watch at the start.

So, running on feel it was.

At the turn around at the 17km mark, I managed to get myself lost, having turned left instead of going straight ahead, and lost valuable seconds/had a break, depending how you look at it. If the first half had been a bit of hard work, and it had, the second half was a breeze. Downwind, lots of gentle downward slopes and plenty of slower runners to overtake.

In the end, I finished a bit tired, but still going strong. I held off PJ to finish in 2:23.

A good confidence boost for the big one in October. If my maths are any good, I might be able to give the marathon PB a bit of a shake. (It’s 2:58).

swooping magpies

It’s that time of year – when the vast majority of Melbourne cyclists, pedestrians and runners are transformed from relatively harmless purveyors of lycra, rubber and sweat into walking targets for magpies.

I don’t think I’ve ever so much as looked sideways at a magpie, but for some reason they seem to have taken a particular dislike to me. At one stage, a particular bike helmet I used to wear got pecked 20 times in 2 weeks.

It was persecution, I tell you. It’s almost enough to make me climb some trees and have myself some magpie eggs for breakfast. Mmmm… magpie eggs and bacon.

Anyway, some bright spark has come up with the idea of putting together an online Magpie Swoop map. And here it is:

Victoria’s Magpie Swoop map.

You can add your own swoop notification by:

Call: 136 186
Email: swoop.vic@dse.vic.gov.au
Twitter: Send a tweet to @dse_vic with the location details and #swoopvic

Find out more at www.dse.vic.gov.au/swoop

Running
15km on the treadmill last night. It may be sweaty, unpleasant and full of televisions blaring away, but at least there are no magpies.

I’m heading down to Queenscliff on Sunday morning for the Bellarine Rail Train 34km run. It should be fun. If you see me there, say hello.

so tired

I’m very tired tonight. It’s all I can do to hold my head above my keyboarddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, the blog.

I woke up before 5am today, because I thought it would be a good idea to run a half marathon distance over a hilly course. It wasn’t a good idea at all, but I wasn’t to know that. As it was, I was tired before I started, and it didn’t get better. A long, hard slog of a run.

Then it was into the city, but not to the office. We had to go to a function room at the MCG for a day’s worth of “planning”. There were team building activities, role plays and a “facilitator” flown in from interstate. If that makes you cringe, then you and I are of one mind.

At least there was good catering.

But now, I’m really tired. It’s all I can do to hold my head up above my keyboard. Oh yeah, I said that.

Is it wrong to go to bed at 6:30pm?

full of s***

No, not more election commentary. Rest easy, dear reader.

No, my title has a clever double meaning which will become evident as you read on, if you persist beyond these few faltering words.

This lunchtime I headed out for a run, as is my wont. A normal run, not too slow, not too fast, and over a manageable distance. But as the run continued, my body started to send me signals that all wasn’t right with the world. These signals were coming from the lower areas, the lower portions of the anatomy.

To make it clear to those of you with only the meanest intelligence: my bowels were calling, and they meant me no good.

By the time I got to within 3km of the office, things were getting a bit desperate, and all the bumping up and down wasn’t making things easier. Collingwood isn’t exactly blessed with public conveniences, as far as I know, so I had to drag myself back to the city, sprint up stairs and let out a hearty “aaaaaaaa” in the mens.

There are few things less comfortable than having to go number 2 while running.

Few things other than reading Dan Brown novels (how’s that for a segue!).

Yes, I’ve been reading Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol, from the library (I didn’t buy it). It is just appalling. It’s an insult to my intelligence on almost every level; and I’m not even particularly intelligent.

And the writing! Does he not have an editor? It drives me crazy the way he, almost at random, inserts statements in italics at least once a page.

It’s really irritating.

I can feel my IQ dropping by 3 points per page. At this rate I’ll be well into the negative 200s before tomorrow. Full of shit.

Running
I chose a terrific time for a lunch-time run with a colleague yesterday. We left the office at 12:30. At 12:35 we were into the park and away from shelter. At 12:36 the wind picked up, followed by rain and what felt like hail. By the time we’d decided to give up and had made it back to the office, the sun had come out.

So, we only managed 3.5km.

Today was a bit better – 14.5km, taking in Dight’s Falls, Studley Park Boathouse, and various other bits.

fresh air

After Wednesday night’s trip to the gym, I’ve been back to running in the outdoors again. This is as it should be.

I mean, sure the sight of me in my shorts sweating and puffing away is not to everyone’s taste, but that doesn’t mean I should be shut away in a room. Runners deserve to be free, damnit.

That being said, mid-way through yesterday’s long run, I began to long for a closed in, airless, warm room to run in. I was heading up hill, into the wind, feeling tired and with a good 12km to go, most of that at least partially into the wind.

The things we do to ourselves.

Anyway, it turned out to be fractionally less than 33km in 2 hours 30, exactly. That’s okay.

I’m starting to think about goal times for the race in October. As always, I’m vacillating between a comfortable pace and going for a PB.

An update: Hell on earth
I’ve think I’ve found a new contender for “least pleasant place to be on earth”. It is: the queue for MacDonalds at the local shopping centre food court, with two kids under the age of 5, both of whom are feral from being stuck inside on a rainy day, one of whom knows she wants “chippies” but can’t decide if she wants to go to Red Rooster instead, and the other one is still complaining because he wants “white” juice, which turns out, after 5 minutes fierce argument, to be chocolate milk in a white packet. I should add, both kids were running free, there were dodgy guys standing about in the queue and disapproving “proper”-looking mothers walking past with well behaved kids in prams.

Not good.