a day off, thankfully

This marathon training business is all fine and dandy while things are going well. You wake every morning, jump out of bed raring to go, and spend your days tearing up and down hills and eating up the miles like some two-legged Ferrari.

But it doesn’t last. Sooner or later the volume of training gets you down, and then you start dreading the alarm clock, as it means you have to drag your leaden thighs out in the cold and punish them for some long-forgotten crime.

I’m not saying I’m at that point yet, but I’ve lost a touch of the old joie-de-vivre this week.

I ran a particularly tough 20km last night. It was basically from one end of Mount Dandenong Road to the other, (Ringwood to Montrose) plus an extra bit to get to my house. It was a touch hilly, and very dark, and I’d been up since 4:30am watching Champions League and going to work.

Then I woke up this morning and realise I was supposed to do a bloody killer session combining tempo and hills. Who came up with that idea?

Anyway, I did it, thought not particularly well. I did 6 45 second reps on Anderson street, then 3 quarters of a lap of the tan at what was supposed to be tempo pace. I suspect the tempo was supposed to be something along the lines of “vivace” but it was for more like “larghissimo” (a little classical music gag for the musically literate amongst you).

It may not have been a good run, but it was long. In my delirium I seriously miscalculated the distance and ended up running 15.5km instead of 12.

Oh well.

A day off beckons tomorrow. Just what the doctor ordered.

seeing eye to eye

My legs and I often disagree, most notably when I thought it’d be a good idea to run 30km up at Maroondah Dam in 2008. My legs, sensibly, thought I’d lost the plot and refused to go ahead with it.

I don’t blame them. If I were them, I’d be extremely wary of me at the best of times. I’m liable to take them out in all weather and, without warning, insist they run for two hours without stopping.

But today, this morning, my legs and I were of one mind. We were both tired.

Last night I fell asleep on the couch, about half way through Law and Order. I remember some poor woman being beaten up by her husband, the cops were helping out, then some glamourous ADA got involved, but after then: sweet oblivion.

The SW lasted right through to 5am, when my blasted body clock woke me up. I was still exhausted, and my legs had hot molten lead flowing through every vein. Not nice.

The 5am run was cancelled.

I did run later on – about 7:30 in the city, but it was a near run thing. In fact, the whole run was completed solely on will-power (sheer bloody-mindedness).

It wasn’t my greatest run – 13km in an hour, but it did include 6 reps of the Anderson Street hill. I’m happy I did it, or rather, I’m happy it’s done.

Tomorrow’s a day off.

am I missing something?

I quote Roger Franklin, writing in that most esteemed journal, the Herald Sun:

MELBURNIANS live in an age of wonders, there can be no doubt about that now EastLink is up and running.
Source: Eastlink offers stress free alternative

Sorry? Did I miss something? I was one of the hordes of people shuffling up the new freeway yesterday, having a gander, but I most definitely missed the “wonders”; perhaps I was too busy dodging the traffic and laughing at the signs imploring me to “slow down”.

Ha bloody ha.

I’m also a bit confused about the story on the front page of the paper, about Graham Polak being hit by a tram. I’m not confused about the tram or anything, and I’m sure it’s pretty upsetting for him and his family. I’m just not sure why it takes up the entire cover.

I mean, who is he? Is he a nobel prize-winner? A great humanitarian? Is he even a particularly good footballer?

I’ve never heard of him before.

Running
A couple of laps of the tan this lunch-time.

atta boy bong su

I do like to use this humble column to celebrate life’s achievers, the famous and the not so famous. So it gives me great pleasure to extend a hearty clap on the back to Bong Su, the 34 year old elephant from Melbourne Zoo who has set a world record.

From theage.com.au today:

BONG Su, the 34-year-old bull elephant at the Melbourne Zoo, has smashed an Australian and a world record, and all it took was a little gentle persuasion.

Not only did he help companion Dokkoon become the first elephant in Australia to get pregnant through artificial insemination, but he has broken the world record for elephant sperm concentration – 2.2 billion sperm per millilitre, compared with the average of 600 million a millilitre.

2.2 billion eh? That’s quite a lot of swimmers. Apparently the average human jizm only has 20 million. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, Bong Su is 100 times as fertile as me.

It did cross my mind that old Bong has gone a bit too far. 50 times would have been impressive. 100 plus is just rubbing it in.

Then again, I’ve never tried to fertilise an elephant. I imagine that would take a bit of doing.

Running
12 or 13km this lunchtime in the general tan vicinity.

Incidentally, the creeping de-tanification of the tan proceeds apace. The dark gray gravel stuff has spread like some noxious weed across most of the river end of the track. I don’t mind overly, despite what I may have said earlier. It may be sacrilege but I don’t actually like the tan surface. Give me bitumen any day.

would you buy a ticket from these people?

I see our new whiz-bang high-tech “smart” ticketing system has been pushed back yet again. Now it looks like it’ll be 2012 before we see any movement.

Jaysus Christ! I reckon I could go to Ticket System Uni, get myself a PhD in Ticket Systems, design a system from scratch AND install the thing personally in the time it’s taken to do this.

Running
I’ve had a couple of passable runs in the past 2 days, lifting my hopes of some sort of minor recovery from the last month’s depressing slothfullness.

Yesterday was 18.5km around the streets near place. There were a few good long hills thrown in and I finished it feeling strong and fast. So, pretty heart-warming.

Today a 13km run including 7 reps of the Anderson Street hill. With any luck the fitness will come back eventually.

god’s truth

There seems to be some misconception amongst you lot about my post yesterday, in which I said something along the lines of:

Julia Gillard: there’s something about her…

Now, it’s true I may have embellished the truth slightly, as I am wont to do, but as they say in the classics, many a true word spoken in jest. Or, as Geoffrey Chaucer would have it: “A man may seye full sooth in game and pley”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Now, those of you who were thinking this blog was just a light-hearted bunch of musings on amateur distance running: recant forthwith! I’m only 104 words into the post and already I’ve covered sex (or at least unrequited lust), classic literature and senior figures in the Australian Labour party. They should include this in the year 12 English literature syllabus, it’s that good.

Where was I? Ah yes, Julia Gillard. If I were 20 years older, or if she was 20 years younger, and I was single… I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t consider it. And, if Ralph magazine is anything to go buy, I’m not alone.

Running
Moving on to less controversial subjects: you may recall there was a small running event last weekend. No? Get with the program – here’s the original post. Anyway, since then my head has been feeling fine, but everything else has been a minefield. My thighs – usually one of my best bits – feel like somebody has been poking them with red hot pokers. Not good.

Anyone who happened to be watching me walk downhill on the way to the train station on Tuesday would have had a good laugh. I looked like some drunken, pained, effete pirate in civilian clothes.

My usual remedy for complaints of this nature is a couple of good hard laps of the tan. It never fails.

In that spirit I schlepped out for 13km around my local streets last night, then backed it up today with 12km, including two tans. Now, as predicted, every thing’s fine, so long as I don’t attempt something as outlandish as trying to bend the legs.

Note to self: never enter an event that involves running up a mountain. Ditto running down a mountain, which is somehow worse.

RIP Anderson Street hill

Yes, you read it correctly: the Anderson Street hill, dreaded foe to generations of runners, cherished challenge and friend to many, it is no more. It is an ex-hill.

After the frankly stupendous display of hill running I completed this morning, the “hill” is over. It has been humiliated by my raw hill-running power. Not once, not twice, not thrice (you can see where I’m going with this) but 7 times. After such a convincing display, it can no longer be considered a challenge, and must hang its head in shame.

Under the Hill registration Act 1982 Anderson street will hereby be renamed Anderson Street “rise” or “bump”.

Sources close to Anderson Street say negotiations are in progress over a last-minute rescue plan, whereby the street would retain hill status in return for re-badging itself “Henderson Hill”, in honour of, well, me.

Running
As you may have guessed, a hill session this morning. 7 reps of the hill plus a long-ish warm up and cool down.