I don’t mean to complain, but

I don’t mean to complain, but I really think we’re getting a bit carried away with this whole winter thing.

I’m a big a fan as the next guy of winter. I like snow, who doesn’t? I also like cool crisp mornings, with or without a dose of atmospheric fog.

But, I really think we’re taking it a bit far.

Today, I went running at lunch-time. At the time (1pm) it was only 7 degrees. 7 degrees! And windy too.

What made it worse was a 2 hour meeting held in the boardroom, which has air-con on 365 days a year. I brought a scarf and gloves.

Running
10km this lunchtime, including 12 sprints up-hill on the William Barak bridge.

hot running, cold morning

My marathon program, such as it is, has passed into the Hill phase, which doesn’t exactly fill me with joy. I’ve kind of enjoyed the conditioning phase, which just involves running lots of k’s, and doesn’t care too much about quality.

Now, and for the next 4 weeks, I’m supposed to be spending all my days leaping up tall mountains in a single bound, pausing only to outrun Usain Bolt on the rare flat bits. Terrific. Still, whatever doesn’t kill me blah, blah, blah.

This morning’s run didn’t actually killed me, but it gave it a red hot go. I’ve just checked the Bureau of Meteorology website, and when I was running (about 5:30am) it was actually 1.8 degrees.

Reading that made me feel better, because it was the first time this year I’ve actually felt cold. I thought perhaps I was getting soft, or sick. If Melbourne keeps this up, I may need to rethink my shorts and singlet outfit.

Still, I persevered. I did my usual hill course, which involves 4 laps of a 2km course, each loop includes 4 steepish climbs that take around a minute each. The focus was on having nice bouncy, springy technique, with a straight back and the knees lifted up pretty high. The stuff I’m reading suggests doing this sort of exaggerated technique is a good way to build strength.

When that was done I headed over to a nice flat spot near my house and did 6 long-ish strides, focusing on a fast camber.

What with warm-up and cool-down (ha!) it worked out to be just under 15km. Nice.

cold, what cold?

Apparently, last night Melbourne had the coldest night since the White Witch took over in Narnia, and what’s more it’s going to get worse tonight.

Really? I can’t say I noticed. I slept like a log. When I woke up, I watched a bit of Brazil vs North Korea, then headed into town, dressed in a short-sleave shirt.

What’s more, I ran 18.67km dressed in nothing but a flimsy pair of shorts and a t-shirt they gave me at this year’s Run for the Kids.

And I felt fine. I still do. I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about.

Running
As I said, 18.67km this morning. The .67km makes all the difference. Here it is on mapmyrun.com.

Culture
There were rumours about the JH mansion about an imminent trip to see Sex and the City 2. I put my foot down and ground my heel in (at the same time, it’s possible!). Instead I took myself to see the A-Team, which has a far more suitable explosions-to-Jimmy-Choo-heels ratio.

I am ashamed to say I quite enjoyed it. The cinema was packed with 10 year old boys, and I was quite happy to regress back to the mid-80s, when I too was 10 year-old boy and the words “I love it when a plan comes together” were the height of wit and sophistication.

I remember going to Universal Studios in 1986, and they had the A-Team car there, on some kind of pivot arrangement so you could lift it up with one hand. To this day, it remains one of the high points of my life.

Anyway, there were plenty of stupid explosions, one sexy chick, lots of juvenile dialog and a plot that predictably left things set up for a sequel. So, all the boxes were ticked and all the 10 year old boys left happy.

Marieke Hardy
Three cheers for Marieke Hardy, who just tweeted:

Six-pack abs make me nauseous. Give me a man with a little belly and I’ll show you a feller who lives life well and heartily.

Just one thing, can she define “little belly”?

refreshing

What’s the word? Refreshing? Invigorating? Enervating? No, none of those will do. The only way to describe tonight’s run is effin’ bloody freezing.

If my Dad was around, he’d no doubt saying something under his breath about “spanner weather” then snigger quietly.

Yes, it’s cold here in Melbourne. Cold, wet, unpleasant, un-relentingly Melbourne-like. God bless it.

That being said – it was a distinctively enjoying run. 3km warmup (or as good as I could doin the circumstances) followed by half a dozen hill reps and a triumphant couple of ks at full-pelt.

Loverly.

blood-suckers

I had rather a good run planned for this lunch-time and even went as far as getting changed before a nasty wardrobe malfunction ruined it all. I won’t go into the details as I don’t wish to upset the kiddies or put you off your wheaties. Suffice it to say: it ain’t pretty.

It wasn’t such a great loss, Melbourne seems to have gone from the height of summer to deep, dark winter in the blink of an eye. It seems like yesterday all the talk was about the best way to cram ice into various items of clothing, today every man and his dog is wrapped up in seven layers of thermal underwear. Weird.

Weird
Even wierder – have a look at this:

Demi Moore’s leech of faith
Demi Moore covers herself in blood-sucking leeches to keep her skin looking fresh.

My first thought was “that’s no way to describe Ashton Kutcher”. But no, I read on:

You watch it [the leech] swell up on your blood, watching it get fatter and fatter – then when it’s super drunk on your blood it just kind of rolls over like it is stumbling out of the bar.

Surely that’s cruelty to animals, isn’t it? Even leeches have rights, especially the right not to be subjected to Demi Moore.

Ugh.

isabella rossolini

Km: 12, for the week: 12

6 days since my last post. (picture me counting off the days on my fingers, mouthing the numbers).

In my defence I have at least once drafted an entire post, only to have bloggerbeta freeze up and lose my finely crafted prose somewhere in the nether regions of the interweb. Perhaps my fabulous dissection of US foreign policy is lying alone and tired in a cable somewhere under the Pacific. Perhaps it has been exploded and its component atoms are scattered in the bowls of a server on the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps it’s living somewhere in the grey memory on my grey PC on my very grey desk in my exceedingly grey office, just waiting for some clever bugger with keystroke recording technology to regenerate.

Who knows? And, more to the point, who cares?

In the 6 days since last posting I’ve had a bad cold and as a consequence only run 25k. I did manage to take MrsJ and J junior to the beach and do some stuffing around in the garden. No long run though…. Not happy at all.

What’s on my ipod?

Ah yes, it’s back, my weekly review of songs to listen to when running. I did promise it would be weekly, and I always keep my word. (except that bit about the ipod, I don’t actually own one)

Mellowship Slinky in B Minor by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers

If the lyrics to one of my songs started with:

“I’ve got a mellowship, I’ve got a fellowship
I’ve got a nonstop “yo swan” hello chip”

I would seriously think twice about putting that on my website for posterity. Then again, sadly, I am not Anthony Keides, and neither am I the kind of person who design extremely irritating websites like the RHCP‘s. I mean seriously, did they do any testing of that design? What are users supposed to do from that page?

Moving on….. This song sees the RCHPs in fine mid-season form, as they were for most of this album (Blood Sugar Sex Magik). The bass is a thing of beauty, the guitar is great, everything’s good. And yes, I know I had a go at the lyrics before, but even they do have their own peculiar charm. He manages to cram into the same song lines like “Sopping wet your pink umbrella, Do the dog with Isabella ” and in the next verse, “My hat goes off to Mark Twain”. Ahh, bless him.

Song: 3
Running: 4