carla bruni

Melbourne’s running spots seem infested with AFL teams at the moment. Yesterday morning it was Carlton loitering on the Anderson Street hill, today North Melbourne were at Princes Park.

The thought did cross my mind that they’re following me.

That’s not a comforting thought. Imagine that: every time I go for a run, there’ll be a mob of 6 foot 4, super-fit elite athletes sauntering about making me feel like a short fat slob.

That’s hardly fair.

Running
Another 12k run this morning, this one based around a fartlek session around Princes Park. I’ve been doing a few of these lately, once a week for the past three weeks. They’re a good indicator as to how I’m going, in terms of speed.

My session (this is based on the marathon training program I did last year):

• 2×60 sec/60 float
• 4×30 sec/30 float
• 2×60 sec/60 float
• 4×30 sec/30 float
• 2×60 sec/60 float

The 3 kms between the office and P Park function as both warm-up and cool down.

I’ve been pretty strict about sticking to the timing. The fartlek bit of the session goes for exactly 20 minutes and I cover just under 1.5 times around Princess Park. If I make it further in the same time next week that means (to me) that I’m faster and/or fitter.

Or it could possibly go the other way.

France
I hope Kevin Rudd is taking notice of events in France, where the President – Nicolas Sarkozy – has dumped his wife and taken up with a rich heiress and former supermodel whose past conquests range from rock stars to intellectuals.

Carla Bruni claims to be:

a tamer (of men), a cat, an Italian,” she told Le Figaro Madame in February last year. “Monogamy bores me terribly.”

“I am faithful … to myself!” she said. “I am monogamous from time to time but I prefer polygamy and polyandry (its female equivalent).”

I approve of this. There should be more polyandrous supermodels in Australian politics. So Kevin, isn’t it time to divorce Therese and hook up with Lara Bingle?

blogging: how to

I read some time ago there are something like 100 million blogs in the world. That’s a heck of a lot of zeroes. What that means is, there’s a pretty good chance as you sit in your train carriage or traffic jam of a morning, some of the people around you might be secretly sizing you up, looking for something to write about.

That quiet looking woman with the red scarf you see every morning might be secretly composing her daily post: “I saw a guy on the train this morning with the most ridiculous (insert your least favourite body part here)”.

Alarming, I know.

If the shoe’s on the other foot, so to speak, and you’re the secret blogger: don’t ever admit to it. That’s my advice.

If people know you’re the guy, for example, who wrote this: long krispy kremy run, they look at you oddly, as if they’re secretly picturing your nipples bleeding. It makes for a strange conversation, let me tell you.

Plausible deniability: that’s the trick. Yes, that is my picture, but it wasn’t me. It was someone else impersonating me. That’s what I say.

Toilets
I wrote recently about Americans (queue eyeballs rolling skyward) and how their vegetables have a habit of talking to them. My general jist was that sort of thing doesn’t go down too well over here in Orstralia. They’ve now taken this one step further, as is their wont, and introduced a talking toilet.

I often hear voices on the toilet, but usually they’re from the next room saying stuff like “make sure you leave the seat down” at high volume. I don’t particularly appreciate those voices, and frankly any more would be undesirable.

Thankfully, even the Americans realise this. One guy at that link above said:

If the urinals started talking to me Id just start using the stalls and if the toilets in them started talking to me, well I seriously expect a baseball bat would be involved.

Time to up the medication, methinks.

Running
A couple of lap of Princess Park yesterday. 12k or thereabouts.

bloody football

I gen’rally try to avoid if I can
AFL in all shapes and all forms
In Melbourne at least if you manage this feat
You look kinda strange and forlorn.

Today it seems harder than ever before
with seventeen pages of wrap-around news
of sacking the coach of one football team
to which I say “Kevin Shee-who?”

“Sheeds” so it seems, was a bit of a lad
if you ask your friends they’ll call him “character”
but all that he did was wave his jacket
around and that seems a bit average

I know that last line, it didn’t quite rhyme
but I promise I’m trying to make up this time
for all my past crimes, and with one long line,
make some sort of sign that I’m able to find
a line with nine rhymes for “malign”

There, is that better?

Running
12.25k this lunchtime, including a couple of laps of Princess Park. Quite a good run, no great hassles. The 0.25 is there just to make up for yesterday’s 14.92k. I made sure I ran the last few metres through the lobby at work. I had to push an old lady over to do it, but who cares.

She probably had it coming.

bailing on Sri Chinmoy

The last words in my post on Friday were something like this:

“I have hopes of running the Sri Chinmoy 30k at Princess Park on Sunday”

Well, they may have been the last words for the day, but they weren’t exactly the final word on the subject.

As it turns out, I spent the next 24 hours mulling over the whole 30k PP issue, with four glaring issues in mind:

1. Those 30k include 6 laps of Princess Park
2. That’s PP over and over and over and over and over and over
3. I’ve already run thousands of laps around the bloody place
4. I have to pay $25 bucks for the privilege.

Do you see where this is heading? That’s right, I bailed on the official SC event, instead doing one big lap of the Capital City Trail, tacking on an extra bit at the end just to make sure it was over 30k.

The map route is now online at MapmyRun.com. It was much more scenic, aside from the bits under the freeway near Macaulay station, and much more enjoyable.

I had no company – other than a brief nod to Jon Faine somewhere in Fitzroy, and the number two guy in Victoria Police who’s name escapes me – but in my experience of Sri Chinmoy races I always end up running by myself anyway.

As it turns out, when I got back to PP, the race was stil in full-swing. I spied some familiar faces hard at work. I didn’t see Morsey, but she was there tearing up the 10k course in sensational fashion.

Police
I mentioned earlier that I ran passed a policeman yesterday. I did a bit of a google search trying to find his name – unsuccesfully – but I DID find the Police media alerts page. It’s quite entertaining in a morbid sort of way.

Articles like this: Wilful and Obscene Exposure in Hughesdale. I like the way they’ve got 4 paragraphs into the article before they think to mention the man was wearing a small-black miniskirt.

Marathon
In the week before last I said I’d do a couple of 30k long runs and then think about the possibility of a start in the Melbourne Marathon this year. I suppose a start is more likely. I can definitely go the distance. I’m not sure a sub 3-hour is doable though.

I’ll have to keep thinking.

Ted Haggard is completely straight

You may or may not recall a few months ago a guy in America called Ted Haggard got himself into a spot of public bother when it came out he had paid a guy for sex and/or amphetamines over a 3 year period.

So what’s the problem with that? As long as it’s between consenting adults it should be allright eh? Well, possibly, but the 14,000 members of the New Life Church didn’t see it that way. You see, he was the head and founder of the church. Oops.

Now, after 3 months of soul-searching and counselling he has announced that he is completely heterosexual. It was even in the Denver Post, so it must be true.

A fellow reverend is quoted as saying:

“He is completely heterosexual. That is something he discovered. It was the acting- out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”

It sounds pretty credible to me. What’s more, I congratulate him on his progressive thinking. Some, less enlightened people, might have said if he spent his Saturday nights hopped up on crystal-meth, playing hide the sausage with rent boys in seedy motels on the outskirts of Denver, that might make him the teeniest bit homosexual.

Not our Ted. He’s as red-blooded as they come.

Running
I’m about to head off for a fartlek session at lunch-time around Princess Park. If you see someone fartleking around in a dark-blue shirt, black shorts and a red face, that might be me.