Ciao

Ok, that's it - i'm sick of this blog thing.
no more.
hope you enjoyed it.
bye.

5km race

I ran the Loaded Hog 5km race last night, and clocked a 19:52. Not my best effort (I'd previously run a 19:33) but all things considered I'm happy with that.
New shoes were all good - I fine tuned the inner-soles (ie, cut them up with J's sewing scissors) last night and I think they're as perfect as can be now.
This morning, went to the gym and started over on RHC Month 1.

New shoes ...

I got some new running shoes on the weekend :-)

They're Nike Air Structure Triax, for overpronators, and they were half price ... can't go wrong with that! Just went to Rebel Sport today to get some inner-soles, to get that completely perfect fit.

I'd like a Falcon XR6, please ...

So I can do this with it: APS Stage III XR6T

Apple Based Products

I've taken up baking. In a small way.
I've started on apple & pear crumbles, brought on by the fact that J's dad brought a whole box of fruit up last time he was here. What better use to put them to, than to whip up a quick crumble.
I used the iconic Edmond's cookbook, and achieved good results the first time. Now I'm off to eat the fruit of my endeavours for the 2nd time (& the crumble too.)

A unique sport

Running is a funny kind of sport. All ages and all abilities can enter in the same race (unlike most competitions where you need to be of roughly the same ability, or it all turns into a one-sided waste of time). You can be as competitive as you like, or just do it for fun. You can compete against the clock or against other runners. And there's the whole calendar side of it, where the competition is on a particular day, and then you do all this training and everything in advance, and the race outcome is almost determined by what you've been doing for the past month.
At least in soccer or cricket, you play every week, and you might train once or twice a week but the whole complete game only happens on Saturday. In running, the whole race distance might be covered twice or three times in one training run.
I've often commented how quickly time goes by, which is generally a sad sort of thing, but for running it's quite good, because you commit to a 4 or 8 week plan and before you know it, it's over and you're ready to race. Delayed gratification ...

It's the weekend

J's mum & aunt came to stay Friday & Sat. That was nice for a catch up, I think J really enjoys having family stay. I went for a run on Sat morning, another 16km in 1:20 ... building up to the Tuesday LH 5km.

Go to Orcon for your free website

Alrighty, didn't run in the morning, went to the gym instead and did Pump. Pleased to know that I haven't become too much weaker, in the month of doing no gym ... although, I can't do widegrip pullups like i used to. Struggle to do one set of 10.

Anyway, I signed up for free webspace at Orcon, but I can't get my website to work. I can edit the default homepage but I can't access any other files I've uploaded via ftp. Dunno if it's me or if it's Orcon's fault.

And then, as Royce just asked, how do we get up early in the morning? J is motivated to stay in shape, and that gets her up even though she's often tired these days (I suspect iron deficiency). I get up early when I feel like it, and sleep in when I don't. It works out to about 1-2 days running, and 1-2 days gym during the week (say 3 days total). It's a habit thing, it was freaky at first waking up at 5:30am, having never done it before in my life, but over time it has become normality.

One of our pastors was talking about finishing the race last night, and talked about some marathons, in particular one Olympic Games in Helsinki (I think) where this guy came running into the stadium minutes ahead of everyone else. But he collapsed on the final lap, and although he tried to struggle on, he eventually had to be helped off by his coach with half a lap to go. How heart breaking would that be ... running 41.8km, only to not be able to finish the final 200m.

Mid-sized run

ok, went for another ~9-10km run this morning. Took about 42 minutes - i've taken to running sans watch, cause my skin gets really irritated by the watch strap.
I'm enjoying this running thing because it's generally nice and quiet in the morning, unlike Pump which has loud thumping music. Usually I like loud thumping music, but not at 6am ...

busy weekend

Weekend was good, but funny. I went to see some guys from clubsub on Saturday morning, then off to a family lunch (mmm, buffet ...), then mow the lawns, then emergency mother's day shopping, then a slow 5km run, then off to a mate's birthday party. A full but good day.
Then Sunday was taken up with running powerpoint slides at church, and going to mum and dad's for lunch, and then more church.
This morning I ran ~10km, feeling bloated from all the eating out over the weekend.

Went to the gym this morning, was going to do Pump, but did RHC pull workout instead. No run ... maybe tomorrow. Felt organised cause I did washing and washed the car this morning as well. I'm at least semi-domesticated.

i know this blog has turned into a running diary, but hey, such is life. If I felt the need to talk about other stuff, or if there was indeed anything else on my mind, then I'd write it here ... but I guess running is about the most exciting thing happening to me at the moment.

Anyway, so I ran 4.4km in 17:46 today, going at 5km race pace. That equates to a 20:12 5km. I'm thinking about running the last 2 races in the Loaded Hog 5km series. They take place from the Loaded Hog in the viaduct every Tuesday evening. I think they've been going all summer, but better late than never.
This gives me 2 weeks buildup for the first race, I'll do some long runs on the weekends, some 10km's mid-week and some 5km speed sessions.

Ran 10km before work today. It's weird, because Tuesday I felt awful - sore neck, bad sleep etc. Last night I was doing the introvert thing, retreat to the spare bedroom and zone out playing GT3.
But this morning, I just felt good. Got up and ran a new route (in fact had to drive some of it first, to check the distance.)
10km is a nice distance ... I feel like i could run it maybe 3 times a week. And maybe a couple of 5kms as well - that would be 40km/week.

Saturday was race day. All the previous 3 weeks training would be condensed into 3/4 of an hour. I drove down with a friend of mine, who was basically my support team for the race, and then in the morning met up with some other friends, one of whom was doing the 10km as well.
It was a cloudy morning for the start of the race, but it was ideal for running, being a very mild temperature with no wind. The course was four laps around a very flat circuit through the Government Gardens. My friend Mike and I started towards the back of the bunch, and it took quite a while to get moving after the gun. We basically had to squeeze past all the walkers.

The first lap was pretty comfortable, although I knew pretty much straight away I shouldn't have eaten breakfast.
The second lap was much the same, passing lots of walkers. It was hard to gauge how I was doing, because nobody was doing the same pace as me.
On the third lap, I was lapped by the serious runners, who finished in 31 minutes. Also, this girl caught up to me, and passed me (the first person to do this!) and I basically sat right behind her going into the final lap.
We traded places a couple of times in the 4th lap, but right at the end she pulled away and I couldn't keep up. By now I was breathing really heavily, and I just didn't have the aerobic capacity to kick at the end. I finished with a time of 47:03, which placed me 50th out of 909 finishers (including lots of walkers!)In my age group (males under 39) I placed 24th out of 112.

So all in all an excellent weekend. I feel a little post-race depression - cause it's all over, and I have to find a new goal/target.
Went to the gym this morning, and discovered I'd lost any upper body strength from before the whole running thing happened, so I'm going to decide soon what to concentrate on, fitness-wise ...