1 adventure completed

For some reason, last night’s appeal for companions on my 27km run through Melbourne’s eastern suburbs didn’t get much of a result. Even a personal appeal to a fellow blogger received a polite “tempting but….” response.

I wasn’t discouraged, and pressed on alone like a good little soldier.

It’s quite light now at 5:30am, which makes the whole enterprise seem much more sane. I’ve also learned from previous experience that spending the whole 2 hours plus listening to commercial radio with their zany morning crews doesn’t actually improve my mood, so today I ran with some podcasts on the mp3 player instead – 1 from Radio National and 2 episodes of TOFOP (a podcast from Will Anderson and Charlie Clauscen).

The run itself was fairly enjoyable and not overly fast, at least until the last 20 minutes when I had an inexplicable burst of energy, upped the speed and extended the route for an extra couple of kms. Have a look at this map on mapmyrun.com to see the extra bits I tacked on in the city.

It was just over 29km in 2 hours 17 minutes.

So, as adventures go, it wasn’t much to write home about, but it’s done.

need an adventure

For some reason I neglected to mention I went to see Leonard Cohen last Saturday night. It was actually pretty newsworthy for me, as it involved my wife and I going out, at night, with no children for more than about an hour. Very rare. The concert was ace, as expected, although I found the merchandising a bit strange. They were selling coffee cups called “Cup of Mercy”. Now, if you’re enough of a Leonard Cohen geek to get that reference, you’ll probably know it’s quite offensive. (Book of Mercy is one of my favorite books, almost good enough to get me interested in spirituality).

On the way home we even had a bit of excitement. It was about 12:30, it was rainy and we were driving along a busy and slippery Hoddle Street. Without warning, the car in front of me slammed on the brakes and I had about 3 quarters of a second to get from 65km to a complete stop. It turned out some drunk (or something else) guy had stepped out into traffic and was dancing in the middle of the road.

Idiot.

The girl driving the car ahead of me was traumatised. She jumped out of the car and starting whacking the guy, who ran away to safety – on the other side of Hoddle Street.

Everyone was okay, at least physically, but it was a shock. I guess us suburban family-types should make sure we’re tucked up safe in bed by 9:30, as normal.

After then, this week has been a bit blah. Go to work, stay at work, go home, go to bed. The only excitement has been the microwave exploding, which isn’t really the excitement I’m hoping for.

So, seeing as there are no near-by mountains to climb, I’m planning on running to work tomorrow morning. It’s about 27km from my place in Ringwood East to the city, but I might even go a longer way. Nothing brightens up a long dull day at work like starting out completely exhausted.

Anyone in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne feel like joining me?

I also have another running adventure planned, although this won’t be for a little while. I plan on running the entire length of the Dandenong Creek Trail. I mapped it out once and I think it’s about 45km from Liverpool Road down to the bay (in Carrum?). It should be doable.

Anyone want to do that one too?

all this reading is giving me an injury

A few weeks ago, I decided I was going to spend the next 12 months catching up on classic literature. This was all Em‘s idea, I should add.

I pictured myself reading Plato in the original greek, Proust in French and Joyce in gibberish. The reality, so far, has been lots of trashy mags mixed with endless websites.

I’ve finally decided to kick the quality reading into gear, and I’ve started off with War and Peace. It’s not too bad so far. There are lots of people called Boris, Natasha and about 20 Anna’s, but that’s fun. The first 50 pages were okay. Unfortunately there are still another 1350 to go. I can’t see how he’s going to pad it out for that long, but I’m sure I’ll find out.

In the meantime I have to drag it into work with me on the train, and I swear it’s making me very uncomfortable. It’s almost enough to make me buy a Kindle.

Running
18km this morning on a very flat course based around the city and Port Melbourne. A beautiful morning for running.

the house is wrecked

Yesterday afternoon was surprisingly pleasant so we had a barbecue. My 4 year old played the whole afternoon with his best friend and also his little sister, growing increasingly mental with cordial, toys and 4 year-old energy. There were spills in the lounge room, spills in the kitchen, messes in the bedroom, spills on top of the messes, cereal on top of the messes on top of the spill.

At one point the boys dragged all the toys in the house outside and tipped them all on the grass, including bits of train sets and puzzles, just for fun.

It was a nightmare, it really was, at least until I remembered we were at our friends’ house, not ours. At about 6pm everyone under 5 was seriously flaking out, and the tantrum rate was about 1 every 5 minutes, so we went home to our nice clean house.

Unfortunately, we’ll probably have to invite them to our house next time. I think I might hide the red cordial.

Running
15km on the treadmill on Friday night. It was my usual pseudo tempo session – I try to run at a steady 14km for an hour, followed by an easy km to cool down. Ho hum.

Yesterday I ran 23km in 1 hour 45 minutes, fairly easy.

finished!

As of this afternoon, I’ve managed to hand in the last of my course-work for a course I’ve been doing this year. It’s a real relief, let me tell you!

I started the year with the best of intentions, as you do. I saw myself in at the library daily, researching online and handing in assignments weeks in advance.

What happened, of course, is I left everything until absolutely the last minute, and I ended up at 10 o’clock last night trying to figure out how I was going to blag my way through a “catalogue of evidence” and indeed what that means in the first place.

So, it’s done now, and it’s good to have that procrastination monkey off my back. Hooray!

Running
A good hard hill sprint session yesterday morning. Nothing today so far – too much homework to do. Hopefully some tonight.

wet wet

A fairly uneventful run yesterday on what was a fairly uneventful Cup Day. The only thing of note was a small ocean that seems to have developed spontaneously on the north edge of the track around Croydon golf course.

There was no way round, over or under so the final 10km of my run were full of squelch sounds.

I also went to the pool later on in the day, for the first time in about a year.

Oh baby, have I lost pool fitness! Last time I swam, I could do a km. Now I struggled to do 500 metres, including multiple stops at the end of laps. Then apparently I looked awful afterwards.

Oh well, I never liked swimming anyway.

running makes me absent-minded

There are some people who know me well, who would say everything makes me absent-minded. I disagree, it’s only waking up in the morning that does it.

Anyway, long running clearly has the unfortunate effect of inducing a stronger than normal case of absent-mindedness that lingers for most of the day.

Exhibit A
The Gold Cost Marathon 2009. After the run, I made it back to the hotel (no mean feat in my considerably muddled condition). Unfortunately, when I checked out, I left a bit of paper in the room that had the booking number for the flight home.

No problem you might think, except that the girl at the check-in counter refused to give me a ticket without it. So, I trooped off to find an internet cafe to look up my email, which would have the number in it. Great idea eh? Well, yes it would have been if I had remember to get some money out to pay for the internet.

When that was fixed, I managed to find the number, but had forgotten to bring a pen or paper to write it down. So… another trip to the shop to buy a pen, then back to the internet.

Then (sorry, this goes for a while) I made it to the front of the checkin line again, only to be told that Yes, the booking reference number was correct, but I was booked in for a flight in 4 days time.

A few terse words were spoken, and eventually I agree to fork over a sum of money to get on the next flight to Melbourne.

Problem solved eh? Not quite. At that point my credit card decided to take a vow of silence. Now, I’m aware credit cards don’t talk a great deal as a rule, but – and this is important – they can usually communicate quite well with credit card machines and atms and the like. This one stopped communicating at all. It was dumb, silent, mute, totally at a loss for words.

So, another trip to an atm followed by another wait in line to talk to the lovely airline girl, who was becoming my best friend.

I did make it home to Melbourne in the end, and to the bosom of my loving family. Of course, the loving F may have appreciated it if I had have remembered to tell them I was running late, but that’s another story.

Exhibit B
Myself this morning. I ran 27km – from home to work – wearing a running shirt inside out. Yes, I got dressed before I ran, not afterwards, but at no point during the run did I notice the problem, which proves my point. Then afterwards I went to the shower, but neglected to bring shoes, so I had to walk back to my desk wearing a suit accessorised with a lovely pair of Brooks Adrenalines.

So far, I haven’t forgotten anything more, that I’m aware of. That worries me, as I’ve probably forgotten something really important.

Oh well, it’ll come out eventually.

long slow and cold

It’s taken two weeks, but I finally feel physically okay after the marathon.

At first I just had general muscle soreness (everywhere beneath the neck). Then I had some very specific knee pain. Then a cold. At one stage, I think I had all three plus a toothache.

There was probably a dose of post-marathon blues thrown in there somewhere, but it was buried somewhere under the toothache so I didn’t notice.

Now, I’m finally feeling okay. I’m still running a bit gingerly, but really enjoying not having to run to a schedule. I managed 17km yesterday. I have no idea how fast it was, and I don’t care. It was over a fairly hilly course and I was running just to “perceived exertion”.

It’s great to run just for the pleasure of it.