A hot Saturday

Well, I managed to lose those 2kg I put on in Lorne last weekend, 73.4kg at weekly weigh-in today. I think I have this weight thing pretty much under control now

My first trip to the Victoria Market for a few weeks this morning.

Too hot for me today to do too much, no exercise yet, but I might do a home workout tonight if I feel energetic.

Went shopping this afternoon for a 50th present for a work colleague (party tomorrow). Ended up buying myself a DVD too, “Status Quo Live At Montreaux”, a new concert, only filmed a few months back, of the same world tour I’ve got a ticket to next March at the Palais. No prizes for guessing what I’m watching tonight if I do go workout!

Gave the bike a good clean and lube this afternoon, including cleaning the chain, which is still really messy even with the chain-cleaner thingummy-bob.

That’s all – a pretty average, except hotter than average,  Saturday.

Edit: I did the workout, the same as last night, then when entering it in my training journal also realised it was the end of the month, so here’s the summary.

Monthly Summary
Running: 83 kms at 5:28 min/km (YTD 694 kms at 5:36 min/km)
Cycling: 284 kms at 23.5 kms/hr (YTD 3351 kms at 24.6 kms/hr)
Other: 12 home workouts

Another okay month, again without a swim, interrupted by some knee niggles and an exercise free weekend away.

A muggy run

An unscheduled (normally Monday/Wednesday) run with Deb this morning was a pleasant start to the day. I thought for a little while we were going to get quite wet, but the pelting rain stopped just as we were about to start out, and it just turned into a very muggy run with a few sprinkles of rain. Our usual hilly, 8km loop, with a detour through Gowanbrae due to bike path closure, at 5:44 min/km.

The day at work was business as usual, nothing exciting or particularly bad about it.

A hot and sweaty, one hour workout at home tonight including some exercise bike and treadmill walking, upper body free weights, core work, vmo exercises and lots of foam roller massage and stretching – all to the accompianment of some loud Status Quo on the headphones. Just what the doctor ordered to blow away the cobwebs.

Blah!

Today has been a pretty blah! day – you know one of those where pretty much everything just sucks.

Does anyone have a gun, or maybe a grenade launcher, or something I can borrow, I’ve got some neighbours who deserve to be on the receiving end of said weapon. Moving house appears to be firming as a likely outcome – I’m just concerned nobody is going to want to buy next to these idiots. Moving is not something I want to do, they say it is one of the most stressful things you can do, and I’ve only ever bought one house in my life – but it seems like it might be the best course to some quality of life.

Oh, and then there is all that having to deal with real estate agents!

A ride to and from work, including an extra little 8km loop this morning, because when I got to work, an extra little ride just seemed more attractive than riding in through the gate. So, about 34km on the bike today.

First event entries for 2010

Not too much to report today. My exercise for the day was riding the bike to work and back (about 28km total). A little late to work and had to attend the first meeting in my lycra (only slightly embarrassing because most of the other attendees were on the phone).

I just entered my first two events for 2010;

• Amy’s Ride – 120km – 3rd January, 2010 – Geelong & Bellarine Peninsula
• Great Ocean and Otway Classic Ride – 145km – 27th March, 2010 – Torquay & Great Ocean Road

Melbourne Marathon 5km – the final word

I rang IMG again today and actually managed to speak to someone, a very friendly lass who confirmed that the 5km course was not officially re-measured with a Garmin device as was done for the 10km course. I asked if the 4.5km measurement was still their “official distance” for the 5km race and she confirmed that it was. When I asked what this was based on she told me it was based on the measurement by the course director, measured with a bike computer.

When I re-iterated that I felt they were still 0.5km out, she said that they had “many conflicting estimates” and again expressed how disappointed they were that it had happened. I saw no point in pursuing it any further, it was obviously not this person’s fault, and as I said previously I need to get over it and move on. So, this is the last time I will mention it!

I got my laptop back today, after a motherboard replacement.

A good hard ride tonight after tea, 28.25km @ 28.6 km/hr.

Happy Birthday Darling!

Today is Adrienne’s birthday and I had another day of annual leave.

We spent the day doing a bit of birthday present shopping and a little bit of gardening, took the dog for a walk, had lunch at Poyntons and dinner with the kids at Biagio’s in Niddrie.

I did manage to sneak in a short run (6km @ 5:07 min/km) to test out the knee, my first run for over a week. It felt a little sore at the start of the run, but not for long, and afterwards didn’t feel too bad. I’ve applied ice religiously and bizarre as it may seem it feels better after the run than it has all week. I guess it remains to be seen how it feels tomorrow though.

A couple of nights in Lorne

Friday was our 27th wedding anniversary and we headed down to Lorne for a couple of nights to celebrate. We stayed at the Great Ocean Road cottages which are nestled into the hill just as you get into Lorne. We had stayed there a few times when the kids were little, so it was nice to have another visit and reminisce.

One of the “features” of the place is the native bird life that come in to the cottages and are tame enough to feed from your hand. There are beautiful king parrots and raindow lorikeets, but mainly cockatoos who are real bullies. I managed to escape with only minor punctures and abrasions when a cockatoo decided to land on my (stupidly) bare arm. To be honest though, when there were lots of them (up to 10 or 15 at a time sometimes) it got a little bit too much like Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” – a film that has always scared me.

We ate out nearly every meal, including a nice lunch at the Arab cafe on Friday, a beautiful meal at Kostas on Friday night and fish and chips last night. We had breakfast both mornings at Kafe Kaos where I had scrumptious porridge with banana and brown sugar. We did a fair bit of walking, but no other exercise. Needless to say the walking wasn’t enough to counter all the eating out, and I’ve come back over 2kg heavier than when I left.

I bought a book in the Lorne Bookshop (which really is one of my favourite bookshops – it is one of those where you always find stuff that you don’t see other places) and read it over the two days away. It was “Running Hot” by Lisa Tamati, a New Zealand ultra-runner who has done heaps of desert runs including completing the Badwater (Death Valley) ultra twice. Seriously why would you want to run over 200kms in 50 degress celcius temperatures with the road surface getting close to 90 degrees celcius and having to run on the white line just so your shoes don’t melt ? If you can check out Lisa’s website you’ll see that her latest venture is to run the length of New Zealand in 33 days beginning at the end of this month (that’s approximately 2200kms or equivalent to 52 marathons). Andrew or Aaron – are you going too ?

A 27km windy old ride tonight – at least I had a tailwind on the way home.

Vale Don Lane

Sad to hear today of the death of TV personality Don Lane. I used to watch his show as a kid and had the privilege of meeting him on a two-day basketball coaching course I did quite a number of years ago. He was a lovely man.

Today was marginally better at work, but no sign of the Dell repair-man so I’m using an even-crappier old laptop at the moment that seems to take eons to do anything. Oh well, that’s a good excuse not to use it isn’t it.

My knee is still weird sore, but better than yesterday I think. I managed to get out on the bike after dinner tonight for a relaxed 20km (25 km/hr) ride and I think it has actually made the knee feel a bit better, although I am still religiously icing it.

I have tomorrow and Monday off and Adrienne and I are heading down the beach (Lorne) for tomorrow and Saturday night, so keep your fingers crossed for the weather to stay nice for us, won’t you. I’m not taking the crappy laptop, so will be off the net until at least Sunday.

Bad day

A particularly bad day today at work, including a major outage, and the complete failure of my work laptop (isn’t it amazing how dependent we become on these electronic devices).

Also, no cardio again, still nursing the knee, but did manage a home workout this evening.

Now I’m waiting up until midnight to attend another work teleconference – the perfect ending to the day – not!

Comfort food

Knee still clicky and sore so no exercise today, and I just cancelled tomorrows planned run with Deb. Depression is starting to descend upon me.

For comfort food, we went out for tea and I had pizza and a glass of red. On the way home went to the supermarket and bought some Lindt Chilli Chocolate, so it’s probably time to go open another bottle of red.

My new favourite TV show is Highway Patrol, you’ve gotta love Senior Constable Megan De Winne – in fact she’s my second favourite policewoman!