I'd woken up feeling tired. And yesterday I'd been tired before I even went for my run, nodding off while at H's swimming lesson. I was on a chair, not in the pool. And this morning started with a shortened "long" walk for the dog, which was probably around 8km, down to the aquarium and back. The highlight of the walk was seeing a pair of Tawny Frogmouths in a tree next to the footpath. I got all excited and doubled back to share my discovery with another 2 dog walkers. I hung around watching the birds do very little and probably showed them to a dozen or so other walkers. I love stuff like that.For the record - they're not owls. They're frogmouths. They spend their days sitting in trees looking like bits of tree. At night they hunt, flying almost silently. They are a good sized bird and seeing but not hearing them fly is a bit weird. I like them. Can be tricky to spot in the daytime, so Go me!
The rest of the morning was a bit of a lazy affair for me. Sal and her sister Mara plus a friend Anthea were walking the Spit to Manly and taking AJ who, as it turned out, set the pace. I was on duty with the H bomb (as I call my 4yo daughter.) For us it was a drive to the Upper Crust pie shop so dad could grab some breakfast, eaten overlooking the ocean at Collaroy. It's a hard life. I had a half-hearted look around a hardware store for some landscaping odds and ends and was on the way to a whale-watching vantage point (assume "via coffee") when Sal called, earlier than expected. So we turned around and headed back home, I changed into some running gear and then we went to Manly to rendezvous with the walkers.
The running plan was pretty simple. Leave small child and car keys with mother, run home. Try to do 24 - no, sod it, 17 - km. Small child and car keys were left in in a restaurant at around lunch time and I headed south. I'd not done the maths, but I figured a run up to North Head via the bush track, then back and then home would give me 17km and 140 for the week. I needed to arse about a bit at the end, but it was a reasonable estimate.
I'm not sure it was the smartest choice, given my physical and mental "meh"ness. Although not a big climb, the run does head up early on. Then there is some sand to run through. My legs hated me. I took a small detour down an overgrown path to near the cliff edge; might go back and explore that a bit more, it might be how the fisherman get down to the rock-shelf below. From North Head back was a bit nicer - mostly downhill. The run along the beach felt nothing whatsoever like winter; boardshorts and bikinis aplenty. Towards the end I knew I'd pull up a little under 17km if I went straight home, so I continued along the bikepath a bit past home and then doubled back.
Job done.
You can head to Strava to see the run if you like, I grumpily load an exported TCX to RunningFreeOnline and I will link to the run on Garmin Connect because it knows where I live and what I do and automatically names the loaded GPS data. MANLY RUNNING. Well, it makes me smile; a ruggedly handsome chap, wooing ladies, saving children from burning buildings, hunting for dinner; Manly! An American friend of an American friend of mine, when told there was a suburb called "Manly" asked if it was all the gays hung out. Also made me laugh. But no, Manly is called Manly because the indigenous Australians encountered by European settlers in the area seemed confident and manly.
I feel like a bit of a teaher today, what with the manly and not an owl stuff. Only wrote that because I felt like linking to this.
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