the wedding is over

You would be pleased, I hope, to hear I made it back more or less in one piece.

The wedding was in a town called Tathra, up in Southern New South Wales. It was nice, as weddings go. Lots of standing around uncomfortably in rented suits and, for the women, stiletto heals sinking slowly into the wet ground.

Later on, the father of the bride, a drama teacher, obviously considered himself a bit of a wit and bon viveur, so we were subjected to a longer than usual set of speeches. On the plus side, it delayed the awful moment when the tables were drawn back, and out came the dodgy dancing.

Shudder.

The drive up and back was relatively painless, considering we were sharing the car with our 16 month old boy who can usually only sit still for 20 seconds at a time.

Running
Not much chance to do much of that I’m afraid. I did manage a hill session, hoofing up and down one of the most vertical bits of ground I’ve seen in a long time. That’s it though.

finally hitting my stride

If my recent scribblings have come at all close to reflecting reality, you’ll probably have got the sense I’ve been a little distracted, what with major life events happening left, right and centre.

What? You didn’t? The whole marriage thing didn’t give you a hint?

Anyway – the marathon training has, of necessity, been squeezed and stretched into unfamiliar times and places (well before the crack of dawn, along the beach, long runs on Tuesdays etc.) It may be a touch unjust to blame all my troubles on wedding preparations, but the truth is, it’s been a while since I’ve had a truly satisfying run. If you were looking on my training log, you could file everything in March and most of February under the heading “hard slog”.

That’s all changed now. In the last three days I’ve had three of the best runs in a long, long time.

Thursday – down at Venus Bay. 10k on country roads, with a nice cool breeze and the clearest sky you’ve ever seen. What’s more, the running felt fast, but so fluent. You know those sorts of runs where your stride just seems so long, when you can feel yourself working hard, but you wouldn’t stop for anything. I finished with 6 strides, and I can say without exaggeration, that is the closest I’m every going to get to running 100metres in 10 seconds. Not very close, true, but still good for me.

Yesterday was a repeat, except I ran about 5k out on bitumen, then over the dunes and back along the beach. The tide is out. No sorry, the tide was out. I had a bit of a Blondie moment there.

Today, a few guys from the Eastern Suburbs Running Group and I went for a long run, starting and finishing at Croydon Aths track. Or to be precise, in the carpark beside the track, which is all fenced in at the moment. A quick and dirty attempt at gmap pedometer came out at 35k (I did a little extra at the end to pick up the paper and stuff).

It was quite a good run, except for PJ, who had a strange rush of blood and went through Ringwood at about a million miles per hour. Actually, it’s not that strange, I have that reaction a lot.

So I’ve just worked out my weekly ks, and it works out to be 124k for the week. Crikey, that’s a lot.

back

Thanks running people for all your kind wishes and things, in wake of my recent announcement.

(For those of you who weren’t hanging on my every word last week, you may have missed that I was getting married. As you might expect, by this stage I need to scratch that word “was” and replace it with something like “am married” or similar.)

It all went pretty well. The day dawned clear and bright and a little on the warm side. “A little on the warm side” soon developed into baking, stinking, boiling hot. Something like the surface of the sun or the depths of hell, only with marginally less fire and brimstone.

By mid morning I was unceremoniously booted out of the house, so the blushing bride could don the veil, dress, garter and other mysterious female things, and also inhale a goodish portion of champagne.

I adjourned to the pub to drink a sensible lemon squash and then slip into a dark suit, tie, flowers and other things. It was slightly less than comfortable. All of a sudden, I was nervous, for some ungodly reason.

At the anointed hour, I shuffled up to the church, then stood around for about 45 minutes, making small-talk with various friends, family and extremely distant relations from the in-laws.

The bride turned up v. late, but looking cool and beautiful. The ceremony was hot, but generally pretty good. I remembered my lines (we do, I will, etc, etc). By about 3:15 the deed was done, and the only thing left to do was stand around for yonks having about 3 million photos taken.

The reception was in a pub nearby. It was the usual sort of thing – bad singer, 3 courses, cake, terrible dancing (mine), embarrassing drunks (not me), bad speeches (mine, again).

Running
I’ve kept running going, although the schedule has had to be shifted around. I did last week’s long run yesterday – about 32 k, including the last 4k at a faster speed. Oh god, I felt every step of that last 4k.

The Sri Chinmoy people have finally updated their website, and you can now sign up online for the marathon in Williamstown this May. That’s a weight off my mind. I’ve been training for this, and it’s unnerving not having any information available on the website.

I’ve also signed up for the Run for the Kids thing. I did it last year and quite enjoyed it. It’s 15.2k this year, and the course seems to have been reversed. I guess the challenge this year will be to go under an hour. I should be able to do it, what with the current level of training I’m doing.

the big day

Lately I’ve been a bit of a mysterious hinter, both here and on other forums. It’s been pretty clear something’s going on, and it has something to do with this weekend, but I’ve kept more or less mum.

The whole mysterious hinting thing has been part of my plan to appear enigmatic, mysterious and devilishly attractive. It worked didn’t it?

No, I thought not. I can’t have that picture on my profile and be devilishly attractive. It’s an either/or thing.

The other side of it is that the big secret, such as it is, involves members of my family, who have some right to privacy.

So what’s the big story then? Oh, didn’t I mention that?

I’m getting married this weekend. Saturday, to be precise. At an undisclosed location near the beach. The location has been disclosed, obviously, but only to invitees, and I suppose the celebrant.

The whole shebang has been a while in the planning. The engagement was over 12 months ago, but other events (another m. hint) prevented any serious planning being done until a bit before last christmas.

As is, I believe, traditional, we started out “only wanting a small wedding” and ended up with something more elaborate than I thought possible. We haven’t gone as far as making guests sign oaths of secrecy, and we haven’t sold the picture rights to New Idea, Bec and ‘lil Leyton style. But, do me a favour, don’t mention it to my other half or any members of her family.

The whole thing is like a finely-tuned machine, except without the “finely-tuned” bit. “Machine” probably isn’t completely accurate either.

It should be okay but just in case, cross your fingers and toes, throw salt over your shoulder like it’s going out of fashion and touch anything wooden you may have at hand. If you’ve come to this site via a porn site, ignore that last bit about wood. That’s probably not good luck.

So anyway, as of 2:55 saturday arvo, all things going to plan, the other half will be promoted to “missus” and I will become “hubby”. Sounds good eh?

Running
13 steady ks this morning, including 6 downhill strides at the end. I’m starting to get back to mid-season form after the recent bout with dog-flu (bigger and hairier than bird-flu).

I have a fairly heavy couple of weeks scheduled next, training wise. I may have to be a touch creative with the scheduling – moving the long run to Monday etc. as the missus and I have slightly differing opinions on what constitutes a relaxing honeymoon.

Blogging
I may have mentioned earlier – I’m getting married this weekend. There’s a chance I’ll be a little sporadic with my blogging the next couple of weeks. If you want to know how it all goes check back every couple of days or so or add this blog to your bloglines, or RSS reader.