What did I do last night? Not a lot. Fed the dogs, packed some stuff in boxes and threw some stuff away, had a Frey Bentos steak and kidney pie for dinner (gorgeous, but not exactly a carb load) and then went to bed after watching a rerun of UK Top Gear. Man-alone stuff.
Woke up feeling ordinary (again) and got up a little before 5 because I had an early start to my chores today. With us in the market for a new house Sal has placed herself well and truly in the market for new furniture. An item of said furniture was arriving at our lock up storage today at 7am, so that was going to be my first run-stop after a shorter than usual dog walk.
Guess what? Started walking Rowlf and Rumpole and My toe hurt. My leg hurt. I thought "I can't do this" and started composing my exit blog-entry. But, as has been happening, once I was moving I realised it didn't hurt that much and I should just man-up and get on with it. Fed the dogs, pulled on the battered and muddy Asics and headed off.
Our lock-up is about 2.5km from home and if you look on the route you can see where our lives are stored. The facility is alarmed and most of our stuff is shit, so I'd not bother ripping us off. The tall-boy Sal had bought, while nice, was big and old and in need of some TLC. It had also cost her more than the high-top transit that it had been delivered in, but not by much - the transit owner was very pleased with his $500 purchase.
I paid him for delivering the thing, restarted the Garmin and head towards the City. It was a little after 7am and I started thinking about how today could play out. The original plan was to run a little over 10k to work and little over 10k at lunchtime, a bit like I had yesterday. But it was early and time was on my side. Add the 5k to and from the lockup to the 7.5k to the office and I get 12.5k. I took an executive decision to have a go at knocking all the miles out in one go, still haunted by thoughts that Juneathon would be all over for me by the end of the day.
It was at about 8k that I finally decided to definitely sod it and do the lot before work. I stopped at a petrol station to get a Gatorade. My form felt OK, but my feet (snore...BORING) were now both hurting and I knew I'd ripped some skin from the top of my right little toe. I keep telling myself that blokes in my grandparents generation fought wars and trench foot and I should therefore stop being so soft.
The bridge came and went in about 7mins (1.5km) which is a bit on the slow side, but still acceptable. Without a decent feed in me I decided to knock out the remainder by heading to the Anzac Bridge and back, which is about as flat as it gets and also hugs the Harbour foreshore, which is really quite pleasant.
I gave myself a little encouragement by considering just how cool I looked this morning. Long sleeve Helly polypro with a singlet over the top showing off all the stripes on the arms. Camelbak. Odd little skulcap with earcovers and the Craft shorts I got out of Janathon. Shoes suitably battered and muddy, showing definite signs of use. OK, I didn't look objectively cool, probably more tramp-like than gazelle-like, but in my minds eye, stuck in 1989, I looked GREAT.
Running along Barangeroo I caught up with another runner and said a friendly "how ya doin'?" to which his "good" was so curt and clipped it sounded more like "gd" and even more like "I have no interest in sharing the time of day with you." Fair enough, his loss. There are far too many unfriendly people running the streets of Sydney. If you're really doing it hard or talking to someone else or properly in the zone then fair enough. But the ones who make a split second of eye-contact and immediately look away for fear of - horror of horrors! - saying hello to a stranger with a shared interest, they piss me right off. And then I get over it.
Where was I? At 15km I was outside of the Maritime Museum and stopped to take today's picture. Starting up again was a bit ooh-ah-achey-ooch so I decided I'd better not do any more stopping. At this point I was considering running 26km, figuring it would get me 150km for the week which would be by far the biggest week of running I've ever done. Do it today, might not get the opportunity again.
The rest of the run, let me think...pretty much a slogathon, but slog it I did and I even allowed myself a little punch of the air at about 25.5km and then at a little over 26 I stopped the clock and slowed to a walk.
I felt pretty much wasted by the time I got to the office. One week down though, happy days.
1 comment:
That's a great view running over the bridge. I used to live in Sydney returned to the UK in 2007 lived in Neutral Bay, then moved to Cabarita near concord. Your pictures are bring back great memories. Thanks.
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