christmas catchup

Time to catchup on the last almost-a-week. Christmas Eve saw me overtaken with a massive dose of the couldn't-be-arsed's and other than walking the dogs in the morning and riding too and from work I didn't move much. I sort of mooched around at work until I was fairly sure no one was going to break anything and then headed home.

Christmas Day arrived and I started with a bit of a challenge, taking three dogs for a walk, little lady on my back. I figured it would be quiet enough on Xmas morning that I'd be able to deal with the potential spaghetti nightmare of leads that, as it happens, did not eventuate. Oscar, our guest pooch, was fired up for the walk, loved having a play in the park but dragged the chain a little on the return. He's getting on a bit and isn't used to going out for walks, so fair play to him. Sal took the opportunity to have a bit more sleep, having initially got up at what for her is the middle of the night and for me is the start of the day. Dogs walked and deposited in the back garden we got on with the serious business of Xmas day; over to collect the grandparents and sister in law, open a few presents with a bemused AJ and then out to the foothills of the mountains - a somewhat flattering description of the surprisingly pleasant suburb of north Richmond - for Xmas lunch and the odd soothing ale. More presents were presented, drinks were drink-ed and food was food-ed. AJ had a great time playing with her cousins, still blissfully unaware of the whole Xmas-is-as-a-big-deal thing. Not so sure we'll have another year like that. Sal seemed to have a good time, though the pre-lunch-sleep in the hammock was made tricky (read impossible) by having AJ (nearly 2) and Max (3 1/2) in with her. I finished the day with a tweaked back, tweaking it as I got a table out of the bus. I kept it moving through the day and slept on the floor on Xmas night, which is usually enough to get over a tweak.

With a slightly tweaked back I took the opportunity presented on Boxing Day to leave the little lady at home, also left Oscar and Rumpole at home and went out for a walk with just the big fella. All very quiet, so I let him off the lead and allowed him to walk far better to heal than he ever does on the lead. I'd taken a few bucks with me in case I found an open coffee shop (yeah, as if...) and did. Wild Sage at Cammeray were setting up at 07:15, so I popped my head in the door and asked if they could do me a coffee. Result! With Rowlf walked Sal, AJ and I jumped in the car and headed back to the cafe for a spot of breakfast in the rain. The middle part of the day was all a bit ordinary. There was an aborted attempt to go and watch the yachts at the start of the Sydney to Hobart, aborted mainly when I got the hump. We doubled back to the City where Sal popped into the Apple store. We needed to sort out our iPad fail of Xmas day.

Darren had bought the family an iPad. Very cool, very exciting, especially for Sal who, most evenings, is glued to her iPhone. Rather naively I had thought you could buy an iPad and just fire it up, much as you can with a Macbook. It was one of the things that most impressed me about our Macbook. Sadly not. You power the iPad on and it asks to be plugged into iTunes. No worries, we have a Macbook. Not quite that simple. With no need to have ever upgraded from the Tiger o/s we had not upgraded. So the iPad would not speak to our iTunes. A quick google search and we found the answer from Apple which was a really quite unhelpful you need Leopard or better and a "well we told you so." Apparently ignorance is no defence. So Xmas day had been iPad free. I tried to trick it by installing the latest iTunes on my Parallels virtual Windows XP machine. No dice. With our copy of Snow Leopard I had another go. Still no luck. iPhoto could see the iPad attached, but iTunes stuck to its guns. Back to google. One file deletion, iTunes removal and reinstall laster and finally the thing would speak to the Macbook and we were in business. With a happy wife to abandon to her iPad I took the opportunity to go for a run.

Sal had bought me some running gear for Xmas. Well, sort of. I have plenty of perfectly serviceable running gear. It's just that is stinks. Which tends to not offend me as much as everyone else. So I donned my new shorts - some rather fetching short-shorts - and singlet and headed out. This is about where my seasonal stupidity kicked in. back was still not 100%, but as I am planning a 33k trail run on New Year's Day I figured I needed to do a bit of trail work, so headed out to find some rocks and roots to skip over. With the temperature now around 30 the morning rain had turned into afternoon humidity and it was a sweaty almost 10k run. My back held, so that was a good thing and I awarded myself a beer.

Monday rolled around and I once again took the three dogs for a walk, this time leaving too early to find an open coffee shop. Back to base, dropped off Rumpole and Oscar and headed out for the second, longer loop with Rowlf. It was a fairly dull and wet start to the day, but nice enough. The Harbour seemed to be full of small fish, schools easy to spot in the relatively still water. By the time the big fella and I got back the cricket was on and Sal and AJ were out with Sal's folks. I successfully declined the offer to pop over and join them, instead setting up shop on the sofa, cricket on the tele and the remains of a case of Sol in the fridge. I reckon it had been around 2years since I had got and taken the opportunity to sit down, have a beer and watch sport for a prolonged period. A day-late Xmas present if ever there was one. Caught up with JCJ and Susan later in the day, after Sal and AJ had returned and that was Monday done.

Tuesday morning. Dog walk: two dogs, one child, no coffee. Did I mention that Sal had put her back out too? Must be something going around. So, I was on sole parenting duty and loaded Alex into the bus and headed for Dee Why where she could put a few more mile on her new scooter than she could in the kitchen. By the time we got to Dee Why she was spark out, so I finished hanging the curtains in the bus, curtains Sal had made with her dad on Monday. Not long after that was done little 'un woke up and we headed down to get a coffee and a a-scootin'. Alex showed no fear on the scotter and pretty soon worked out that gravity was good and she could roll downhill far more easily than she could puch up hill. I had brief thoughts of poor-parenting as I noticed a lot of kids wearing helmets while on their scotters while AJ had all the protection afforded by her flowery cotton hat and sunscreen. Then I got a grip, realised that she probably would not fall (she didn't) and if she did (she didn't) it would be at low speed from low height, and kids fall over all the time, it was not as if she'd be falling on spikes.

Long blog posts like this are what happens when Australian cricket teams are shit and there is nothing on tele. At work. Where was I?

After a spell of food fail we head back to the car and then onto Upper Crust pies on Pittwater Road where we got the prime park right out front. There were 2 in the queue in front of me and 18 in the queue at one point when we were eating meat pie, sausage roll and lamington, the last two scoring high on the foods-you-should-not-eat-in-a-car-unless-you-like-hoovering scale. AJ was pretty tired by now, sleeps well in the car so I head north, parking up at West Head. She was still spark out, so I put the seats back, closed the curtains and a short kip myself. Campervanville approaches; first successful flat-out-snooze. When we woke up we went down to the lookout and looked out. Very nice indeed, will have to go back at some point. We had a bit of a wander, took a few pictures and then headed back to find Sal's folks at our place, grandpa cooking a roast lamb dinner. With an hour or more to go until dinner and Sal missing AJ - we'd been out for over 7hours - I once again took the opportunity to head out for a run.

As if the Boxing Day run had not been daft enough, this one was really daft. My bro had been telling me about the book Born to Run which is mainly about barefoot running. One of my DailyMile friends has started barefoot running, I'd watched a couple of youtube videos about it, read a few other pages and I thought I'd give it a go. After all, with a plan to run 33k on NYD and also to run every day of January, what could possibly go wrong? I did, in fact, start quite sensibly. The plan was to run my short Artarmon loop in reverse and in my old nike air rift shoes then do a bit of proper barefoot stuff in the baseball field at the bottom of the road. First lap went really quite well. I was surprised at how I instantly altered my running style, almost completely eliminating heel strike as I took each footfall on the balls of my feet and shortened my stride. By the time I got to the end of the three-and-a-bit-k loop I had decided that I'd skip the park bit and do a second loop properly barefoot. And yes, I do know that the air rift do have some cushioning, but mine are 10yrs old, they were (apparently) designed with inspiration drawn from Kenyan barefoot runners, so I managed to kid myself I was getting close to barefoot.

This time I completely eliminated heel strike. Considering how many shoe-clad miles I have run I was surprised at how naturally I altered my style. I was also pleasantly surprised at how I did not miss the cushioning of shoes. A couple of times I picked up a small stone in my sole and had to stop to brush it out, but for a first try it all went very smoothly. After a couple of km I could feel my soles were a bit warm and stopped to take a look for any damage - none that I found. So I kept on. The story has a not-so happy end as at the bottom of the street I stopped again when the third toe on my Right foot felt a bit tender. I checked quickly for blisters, saw a bit of skin hanging off and quickly pulled it off. Only I managed to remove a little more skin than I was expecting and brought the run to a stop. Still, just over 3k in the goat boys (no cushioning) and just under 3k proper-barefoot was a good start (well, I thought so.) I walked the last few hundred metres home, washed my feet and checked for damage, finding only the missing skin on the one toe. The toe was a bit tender for the rest of the day, and this morning it still felt a bit tender and, well, weird. I put the weirdness down to the missing millimeter of skin. It didn't stop me walking the dogs (just two, one child on back, no coffee) but I have decided to not run or cycle today, to give it a little more time to pad up again. With a small plaster on the toe, providing the missing height (such that it is) it feels runnable, but in a break from tradition I'll be smart about it. Today. And probably only today.