a special place in hell awaits

right between Phillip Ruddock and the entire cast of My Kid’s a star whoever is responsible for this:

Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities – ‘Learning from the Learning’ Forum

“Learning from the learning?” Are you mad? The helpful author goes on to say:

Learning what has worked from these approaches, about what the next steps might be and how we can move forward and continue to learn from what we have learnt is a central tenet of the VCHRR.

Clearly plain English is NOT a “central tenet”. You can kind of follow the thinking: one mangled use of the word “learning” is cool, up-to-the-minute jargon, so two must be twice as good.

Running
I had one of my many vague moments this morning at precisely the wrong time. Five minutes into a fartlek session in Princess Park and I suddenly forgot what I was up to. Was I in a fast bit or a slow bit? A 2 minute bit or a 30 second bit? I was fogged.

I blame the cemetery, influencing me with crazy ideas about mortality and why they chopped down the trees on Lygon street.

Anyway, a fartlek session turned into a sort of tempo run. 12km in about 48 minutes.

Trailwalker
I’m beginning to think 100km on-foot jaunts must be good for the health. Clarkey claims to be fighting fit and I gather Em is much the same. I, however, am subject to frequent mental, what’s the word? Erm….. ah yes: blackouts. And Jojo, I’m not sure I know what she’s doing.

I knew I should have done trailwalker!

shorts

You’ll be thankful to note, yesterday’s proposed change of editorial direction doesn’t seem to have much of a future.

I did try. I tried my whole-soul best to think of something erotic and running-related, but I just don’t see how it’s possible. The best I came up with was the idea of posting a picture of me in my new racy running shorts.

They are quite revealing, but erotic no. God no. Especially not after my lunch-time run. And you definitely don’t want to see them after a long run, what with the chafing and all.

So, back to whimsy. Whimsy, whimsy, whimsy.

Running
13.1 km (precisely) this lunchtime. It started at work and took in the delights of Carlton, Brunswick and alongside the cemetery. I did my little tempo session alongside the cemetery, ending up feeling a bit better than the inhabitants. But only marginally.

anderson street hill

For some god-awful reason, known only by my sad excuse for a subconscious, I decided today was the day for a tempo session AND hills. One can only assume I’ve done something extremely bad in a former life and/or in a dream.

Either way, as you might expect, it wasn’t a wholly pleasant exercise. I started out at lunch-time in the city, after showing a rare bout of common sense at 5am. At that point I, quite justifiably, thought it was a little too cold to venture out.

On the other hand, 5am runs may be cold, but at least you don’t have the psychological torture of making an exit from the office. For some reason, even the hint that I’m going for a run seems to bring hordes of people out into the lobby, and not just ordinary jo-blows: people who really shouldn’t see me in my shorts.

I ran the gauntlet of leers from the boss’ boss’ boss’ PA and various other low-lifes, after which half a dozen Anderson street reps didn’t seem so painful.

Don’t get me wrong, Anderson street is never fun. Neither are 15 minute tempo runs around the tan. Let me qualify that, they probably could be fun, but only to someone with, as they say in the classics, a diseased imagination and a healthy dose of self-hatred.

In fact the best thing you can say about today’s run is this: I didn’t get shot.

Danger
Melbourne readers will no doubt recognise that last sentence as a rather oblique reference to yesterday’s triple shooting in extremely-down-town King Street. To the best of my knowledge, the only person to actually die was a runner who stopped to give the woman some help.

I don’t mean to make light of this. Quite the opposite, I think he was one of the rare people who actually deserve to be called a “hero”.

If I came across a fight, would I intervene? I’d have to think carefully about it, after yesterday.

On a similar issue, in the US it’s been noticed how often runners/joggers come into contact with the seamy side of life. See Nation’s Joggers sick of Finding Dead Bodies.

good omens

I’ve been thinking a bit more about good last-third-of-a-marathon music. Rather than surveying the entire history of pop music, or worse the entire history of recorded music, I’ve been focusing on something more manageable: my MP3 player.

I’ve been going through, separating the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the running songs from the non-running songs.

• Bach – “Goldberg Variations”. That’s out. Not aggressive enough.
• Billy Bragg – “Black wind blowing”. Definitely out. Too mopey.
• Jeff Buckley – “Witches Rave”. That’s in. Perfect beat
• Leonard Cohen – much as I love him, he’s banned from the marathon. Not right at all.
• Jimi Hendrix – “Manic Depression”. That’s in.
• PJ Harvey – pretty much all of “Stories for the city stories from the sea” is in, particularly “Kamikaze” and “Big Exit”.
• Stevie Wonder – “I was made for loving her”. That’s in, just because I like the song.

This outta keep me busy for a few weeks.

Running
Last night’s run was one of those runs you savour for a long time, when everything comes together in one harmonious whole. The stride seems long and fluid, the hills conveniently seem to flatten themselves as you approach. You can feel yourself working hard, and moving fast, but you wouldn’t dream of stopping for a second.

A good omen.

It was my normal 12k course, lengthened slightly. The program called for 2 sets of 10 minute tempos. In reality, the whole thing was more or less a tempo run. I didn’t note the start or finish time, so I have no idea how fast it is, but that’s not the point.

A fluent, fast, morale-building run was just what the doctor ordered.

where am I?

I don’t mean that literally, obviously. I mean, most of the time I have a fair idea where I am. For example, right now I’m about 16 floors above Lonsdale street, hunched over a keyboard working on my square-eyes and ennui.

No, I was referring to more specific running stuff, like:

• How’s the training going?
• How am I feeling about the whole experience?
• How confident am I about the marathon? (which after all, is only a month away…. Less, holy shit)

The bullet points might give you the impression my thoughts are all organised and well thought through. Don’t be fooled. The questions might be organised, the answers I can’t vouch for.

On the plus side – I’m pretty damn confident I can run the distance. God knows I pretty much have done in training. That wasn’t the case in 05. I remember lying in bed sh*tting myself; convinced I’d have to be rescued from the side of Beach road in Elwood or something. I’m also pretty sure I have never been fitter in my life. I can confidently run well over 30k with no problems whatsoever.

On the down side – the recent hip problem did shake my confidence. I also can’t tell what’s going to happen on race day. There are just so many unknowns (weather, food, sleep, brain-fades, the “wall”). I also have this nagging feeling I haven’t done enough; that I’ve taken some of the training too easy.

Summary
The soul searching above was brought on because of the Monthly update – April on the Ausrun forum. This is what I wrote:

• April ks: 374.4
• YTD: 1350
• Injuries: strain to my left hip – a couple of sessions missed
• Excuses: see above
• Races: RFTK: 56:42
• Upcoming races: Williamstown Sri Chinmoy marathon
• Goals: see above

Running
13k this morning, including a desultory 15 minute tempo section. See what I mean? I did the training, but is it enough????

fleeced sheep

One of those stories I really want to believe are true (and I won’t hear anyone telling me otherwise):

Thousands of people have been ‘fleeced’ into buying neatly coiffured lambs they thought were poodles.

Entire flocks of lambs were shipped over from the UK and Australia to Japan by an internet company and marketed as the latest ‘must have’ accessory.

But the scam was only spotted after a leading Japanese actress said her ‘poodle’ didn’t bark and refused to eat dog food.

Read the full story at Metro.co.uk

Running
13k last night, including some tempo work. 3 lots of 8 minutes with 3 minutes slower recovery between reps. I did it with the old shoes, which thankfully still feel pretty good. In the past I’ve had new pairs of shoes that make the old ones feel unwearable.

rain

A very rare experience this morning – a run in the rain. The rain!

It’s a funny thing, these days when we actually have rain, it’s all a bit of a surprise. You have to find the umbrella from way in the back of some cupboard or, in my case, the back of the shed. Either that, or you hide in shop fronts and under overhanging roofs and dart from cover to cover.

Very strange.

Running
The run this morning was a tempo one – 2 sets of 7 minutes within a total distance of 13k. I found the 7 minutes took me about two-thirds of the way around Princess Park.

A few people yesterday seemed surprised I started and finished my run before dawn. Sadly, it’s a very common occurence these days. I can’t seem to find the time after work, and I dislike running on my lunch-break. I don’t like dripping sweat over everyone at the office.

So the only thing to do is get up early and run. If I want to get a good 15k in, plus a shower and brekky, plus battle the trains in from Ringwood, I have to get up at 5.

I don’t know if you’ve been up at 5 lately, but it’s pretty dark. Very dark. Even after fifteen ks, say around 6:15, it’s still dark. And miserable.