old and slow

I’ve been reading just now, a piece on the Punch about photoshopping pictures to make yourself look younger and more beautiful. For example, here’s a “real”, unaltered picture of a 50 year-old woman:

Quite a nice picture eh? She’s pretty attractive.

Here she is after photoshop:

Odd eh?

I’m beginning to think I need of photoshopping these days. In real life I can sort of wonder around in a blissful daze, providing I avoid mirrors, totally unaware of how I look. In pictures, however, it’s hard to avoid the awful truth. I take very few pictures for just this reason.

Here’s my most recent picture, also my new facebook profile shot, taken on Monday afternoon at the docks in Hobart:

Scary eh? Admittedly, I had was pretty grumpy and cold, hadn’t slept much and was feeling less than enthusiastic about going to some conference dinner.

Here’s an older profile shot, taken a few years back at Venus bay, when I was relatively young and fresh-faced:

It’s all going south rather quickly isn’t it? I blame years of hard living, destroying my skin’s youthful elasticity and dampening my joie de vivre.

Running
My joie de vivre is not the only thing a bit damp this morning. Some bright spark (me) thought it would be a good idea to go for a run early this morning. I was up at 5:20 and out the door quick-smart. Even at that time, it was warm and humid. I sweated around my usual 12.5km course in pretty much right on an hour. That’s 5 minutes faster than 10 days ago, but still 8 minutes slower than my PB.

When I finished, I was so sweaty there were complaints. Actually, the complaints were about the smell, but it’s the same general idea.

I use this morning’s course as a measure of my overall fitness. (here is is on mapmyrun.com) It’s 12.5km, but not at all easy. I could run that distance in a race at under 4 minute/km pace pretty easily, but I’ve never got close on this course. There are 3 sharp hills and a couple of long slow ones. They hills are all in the first 8km, so the trick is to keep it strong and steady through them, leaving enough energy to fang it over the relatively flat last 3km.

So that’s my goal (for the moment): pick up enough fitness and speed to be able to give 52 minutes a shot. I’d like to do it in under 50 minutes one day, but that’s a way off.

it ain’t pretty, but…

I could never be bothered shaving on the morning of a race. There doesn’t seem any point making myself presentable. I mean, look at this, from Monday’s run…

No amount of shaving’s going to make that look good! The photographers at SC races normally make a point of looking elsewhere when I approach. I applaud their sturdy common sense, in that regard. However, they must have had some new guys on last weekend. I’m all over the place:

and yet again…

Incidentally – it looks like I came 7th in the 10km. See the SC results page. That’s gratifying, especially when I felt so down about the result, post race.

Running
I ran last night around my local streets – 13km. No big deal. Just a run.

Comments
The “Akismet” spam filter thingamajig that wordpress uses seems to have taken a dislike to AJH and Em recently. I can’t think why. Possibly it knows something I don’t.

I think I’ve un-spammed you guys now, but I can’t be sure.

run fugly

I’m not normally a fan of marketing people, and I have a natural tendency to dislike Nike, but whoever it was who invented the term “run yourself ugly” was some sort of minor genius.

Proof:

There are worse out there, but blogger, quite sensibly, refused to touch them with a barge pole.

There is video too of me crossing the finishing line (available from the herald sun website) and it’s quite amusing. You see me sort of veer off to the left of screen after I finish, in a slow-motion collapse. That’s quite an apt way to describe the rest of Sunday, actually.

Looking at the evidence presented so far, all these digital “enhancements” of the running experience are decidedly a mixed blessing.

new picture

I don’t know if you were one of the readers of my blog a few weeks ago when I discussed buying a pair of Skins. My reasoning at the time was that “it’ll make me look damn sexy.”

Now, I know that’s one of the more ridiculous assertions in living memory, too stupid even for the internet. What’s more, as it turns out, it’s completely unnecessary.

What am I on about? Not sure, let me gather my thoughts…. Ah yes, that was it.

Have you noticed there’s a new picture on my profile? Up there on the right of screen? Yep, that’s the one – me at the beach sometime last year.

In the interests of keeping a standardised visual style across all marketing channels (I don’t know what that means either) I put that picture on my facebook profile too. (If you don’t know what facebook is, lucky you.)

Well, anyway, it’s been a bit of hit, at least on facebook. Going by the comments I’ve received, it turns out I am sexy or, in the correct parlance,”hot”. Although, the picture only seems to work its magic on the male half of the species, thanks “Peter Gilfillan”.

Sadly for Peter, I’m married and not at all interested. Also, that photo was taken before 12 months of sleeplessness and marathon training robbed my skin of its youthful elasticity and my face of its ruddy good cheer.

Running
Another Saturday arvo long run last weekend. Regular readers will know I’m not a fan of the afternoon long run, particularly when it crosses into night-time. But, this is a cross I have to bear, boom, boom.

33k, including 3 laps of the effin’ Mullum Mullum creek trail and half a dozen strides at the end, for no other reason than blatant self-hatred. Ah, well, the things we do.

fatherhood is bad for athletes

You know you’re running a little short of ideas when you start writing blogs about MX magazine, but I’ve never been one to be proud.

Last night they ran a double-page spread on Lleyton Hewitt, suggesting his little girl Mia is responsible for his recent form slump. To which the obvious response is “who cares?” After all, the longer his slump goes on, the more likely he’ll retire and slip into obscurity forever. Have another baby Lleyton. In fact, have you considered quads?

But I was interested in this idea that fatherhood reduces your ability to be an athlete.

Now, to the extent that I take part in athletic events, I’ve found the opposite. A baby crying just makes me want to get out there and train, train train. Here’s the evidence: pre baby marathon pb – 3hrs 43. Post baby marathon pb 3hrs 12.

Sri Chinmoys
The results from the weekend’s race aren’t really online yet. They’ve published a PDF with only the top 3 place-getters in each event. All I want to do is find out what position I came. At the time, the lady at the finish line flatly refused to tell me where I came. I’m not sure why.

Also there are 256 photos online, none of which includes me. Why is that? Am I so unattractive? Why take photos of all marathon finishers except me?

I’m starting to feel hurt.

And it’s not the first time. I ran a 10k in Princess Park in February last year, and they didn’t even record my time.