that was the week that was

OK, a quick bridging post from Burleigh Heads where I am holed up in a very nice AirBnB with a couple of close friends and their youngest daughter. Tomorrow Dave and I will head off to run the Gold Coast marathon, both woefully undertrained and unready for it. Ho hum. For my part the problem has been a lingering cold that robbed me of my last long run before the holiday in Bali and is still, well, lingering. So I didn't do my last long run and I've not run since May.

And that is a bit of a bugger because after an under-par performance in Berlin last year I was hoping to have another crack at a sub-3hr up on here on what is an extremely flat and usually quite fast Gold Coast course. And despite where I am, there is still a bit of me that thinks I may head off on the 3hr bus at 07:20am tomorrow morning, daft though that is.

Then there is the other bit that says nah, fuckit, just get through it. You've not got a PB in you so don't kill yourself out there. That bit go the upper hand at lunchtime when, to wash down my massive spag bol at the Burgleigh Heads Surf Club, I had a Little Creatures Pale Ale. And I may have shared a small sour with Dave just before dinner. Yeah, 2018 is not a PB year.

Anyway, the weather up here in Queensland is quite glorious. I'm not a big fan of the Goldie, but in Winter it can be lovely. The water looks cracking, it is in the low 20s without humidity and not a breath of wind. Last night I stayed with Sal's sis and family in Palm Beach and I slept like a baby, which was nice. I head breakfast by the beach at Avvia with Sal's eldest sister and we were joined by another friend who lent me the book Brain Training for Runners. To make the trade fair I told her about the Barkley Marathons documentary The Race that Eats its Young. Exchange is no robbery.

Anyway, as I continue to work backwards, I flew up to the Goldie yesterday so I'd have today as a nice bimbly chilled day before the race and because I fancied picking up my race number on Friday rather than Saturday when I figured the expo would be chaotic. I'm not a fan of the race expo wiht its Ikea-esque one-way snaking path from bib collection to exit. I don't need to buy any new kit, or magazines, or nutrition, or anything else, just get me outta here!

A post shared by Kevin Foreman (@auswomble) on Jun 28, 2018 at 10:04pm PDT

I hadn't taken the full day off work (though after the week I had I do feel like taking the rest of my life off work, maybe more on that later) and popped into the Manly office for a couple of hours before the ferry, train, plane, bus travel to the Gold Coast Convention Centre then final bus to Palm Beach. Sounds like quite a hike, but was pretty simple. Not much of interest from the trip; of course coming over the Harbour on the Manly Ferry was lovely, I feel the business class (and seat 1A) trip up was a bit of a waste as I had not abandoned all hope of a PB yesterday so didn't have a drink - more fool me. I think if I squint a bit I can see the office in that second instagram picture...

Right, I think that will do for now. If I go back any further this will descend quickly into a rant about how shite work was in I don't feel like recalling that right now.

Maybe later. OK, race eve sleep time.

à bientôt JCJ

JCJ, ever present mate since I arrived on these shores in 1999. My first Sydney dive was with him and few other mates, a bimble around the (now gone) swimming enclosure (shark net) at Balmoral.




On Tuesday he and Mrs JCJ move back to Blighty.



So no longer just up the road, but a dear friend who I look forward to spending time taking pics and talking shit with again soon.

The City2Surf

Today was Sydney's annual fun run from the City to Bondi, aptly named the City2Surf in a nod to the San Francisco 'Bay to Breakers' which the race emulates. I've done it a few times and will probably do it a few more. The optimistic aim this year was to break 55minnutes. Having broken the curse of the Rose Bay piss-stop thanks to my new approach to hydration 55 was achievable at a minute and a bit better than my PB.

But preparation had not been great. I've done no speed work as such, although I did pick the pace up a bit when I ran with Andrew Fletcher a couple of weeks ago. And I have clocked PBs in the Six Foot Track and over the half and 10k this year. My cruising speed is up, so you never know.


Preparation was borderline awful. Harrie is back to waking several times a night and I'm tired pretty much all the time. Saturday night was bitter sweet pasta with two dear friends who I see rarely. We used to meet several times a week, go diving, have beers...then, one by one, we all had kids. The reason for the meeting was that they are both moving to the US; Justin for 3yrs and Vince is moving back to the homeland after 13years in Sydney. We had a good evening; the fact they will be half a world away is unlikely to make much of a difference in how often we meet. Such is life. I had pasta, apple crumble and water and was back home and in bed at around 11:30pm.

I had to deal with Harrie 4 times, Alex twice and Rowlf once before I got up at 5:30. So it was a thoroughly disturbed sleep. I went through the pre-race motions of getting the bus to the City, wandering to the start, dropping my bag off, having my last piss and then hanging around in the red group pen for 40minutes before the gun. The MC tries to gee-up the crowd with mixed success. I did learn that there are now more people helping along the course than the number who ran the first event. The wheelchair athletes went first (Kurt Fearnly, for my money Australia's greatest athlete, won), then the elites and then the red group.

I don't like the start of the C2S. The sheer number of runners, not all whippets, makes for a choppy first km as you try to get some clear air and into your stride. And so it was today. It knocks my confidence a bit because it feels slow. By Double Bay I was running reasonably unobstructed but
feeling that it was all a bit too laboured. My head was all wrong and I had pretty much convinced myself I was not going to get a PB today.

As I ran through half way the clock was somewhere around 28/29mins. That gave me a glimmer of hope, albeit very faint. The first half has the choppy start and the big climb, so a reverse split is always a possibility. It was an uninterrupted run to Bondi; not too crowded and I wasn't planning on any drink stops. My hydration approach was to belt 600ml of water at a little over15mins to the gun. Doing this shocks the body into shunting water around and not into the bladder, which is what happens if you drip feed. Apparently. It seems to work for me. I figured I could run for an hour (in winter) without water breaks.

Much is made of Heartbreak Hill but a lot of runners will tell you it is the bastard little hills on Military Road and up to Dover Heights that are the unpleasant ones. I'll certainly tell you that. I kept a fairly even pace on the second half. I didn't look at my watch because I wanted to run to how I felt and not chase anything. If I didn't have a wife and 2 kids I'd probably batter myself, but nowadays I tend to run to what I think is the limit of not-being-a-zombie-for-the-remainder-of-the-day-and-the-following-day. My mood improved as I got to glance out at the ocean, and I always get goose-bumps when I see Bondi and the southern coastline. It's a bit special.


I got a shout from my sister-in-law Mara just before the drop into North Bondi. She is in the SES and helps marshal the event. It was a good job she recognised me as I was peering at her colleague and not her. In my defense she was in a cap, sunglasses and shapeless orange fatigues, so was not standing out. From Mara the course is run at a decent pace down into Bondi before a fairly nasty 700m gentle climb along Campbell Parade. Then you turn for the last 400m along the beachfront to the finish.

As I approached the finish line I saw the clock; it was still under 55mins. I didn't go flat out (I probably did the whole thing at about 90-95%) but I kept the foot down. I went over the line at a clock time of 55:22 and stopped my watch at 55:01. A personal best...but had I officially sneaked in under 55mins? I didn't know. Seeing 55:01 pissed me off a little. It's like bowling 199.

More logistics; get medal, collect bag, chat to colleague who did about 57mins, call Sal to see where she and the kids were - Bronte, same as last year. I skipped the coffee with colleagues and did the Bondi to Bronte walk to join the family. It was a stunning day; ocean flat and clear, skies blue, warm sun. I stopped to watch a couple of dolphins at Tamarama - proper good-to-be-alive stuff. I met Sal and the kids at the playpark at Bronte Beach, we loaded up and headed to Charing Cross for a full-Irish refuel, black and white pudding and all. Marvelous.

Oh, and for the record, I ran an official 54:53. Not a bad days work.

meeting a streaker

I have my brother to thank for my meeting a streaker. A few years ago Darren alerted me to Janathon, an online not-competion that I competed in. Or rather didn't. Because it isn't a competition. The idea, quite simply, was to run every day of the month, log miles and blog about it, a community-stroke-fitness-and-fun thing. Whoever did run/log/blog and ran the greatest number of miles in the month was not the winner. Because, as previously stated, it wasn't a competition. I didn't win, and neither did Gary, but he did run further than me by quite some distance. I'm not sure what word I should use, instead of "won", to describe how Gary came by his GPS or how I came to be the proud owner of a Wiggle shopping voucher; I logged the second highest mileage. I went on to not win the following Juneathon (Gary was MIA, and his blog looks a little unloved these days...) and Janathon (I stubbornly ran the same commuter miles over and over again) before my wife Sally banned me from taking part in any more. With 2 small kids (now aged 2 and 4) she thought it more important that I do some more parenting stuff in January and June whereas I thought spending my evenings in a catatonic stupor was the way to go. in hindsight I think she was probably right. Probably. And besides, Ben arrived on the scene, kid free and unencumbered by employment to push the "course record" way beyond what I'd consider doing. Not that that is important. Did I mention it isn't a competition?

Jan/Juneathon is the brainchild of Cathy, to whom, along with the other named folks in this post (and more besides) I owe a debt of gratitude for helping me become the runner I am today (a very sore one, desperate to stop - haha.)

Gary is not the streaker and neither is Ben or Cathy. Andrew is (his blog looks a bit neglected too.) For Andrew the -athon challenge is the blogging as he runs every day. His runstreak is about to break 800 days in a row. I tagged along with him, or him with me, on his first run (he ran twice) of day 791.

The -athons are mostly a UK thing with a few randoms such as me taking part from afar. Andrew lives in the UK and I live in Australia. Our friendship has been entirely online and communication overwhelmingly via Twitter, with the occasional comment on blogs and mileage-logging sites (Strava seems to be where a lot of the cool kids now hangout.) Once an -athon blog was complete the (not)competitors tweet a link to their news. Around and during my my -athons I would check Twitter. I was also using Twitter to keep tabs on my brother who was, back then, a mad keen tweeter. Darren has left Twitter - cold turkey - and I retired from -athons.

I drifted away from Twitter and have rarely returned. The app sat unopened and unloved on my PC and phone. I get emails saying such-and-such is following me, others saying people I don't know have tweets for me. It was just luck that a Twitter software update arrived at the same time as Andrew's post about his upcoming visit to Sydney. It was even luckier that I didn't ignore the update, as I usually do. We exchanged a few messages and setup last night's run.

Tuesday's promised showers had not materialised. Until about 20 minutes before our meeting, when I got a light wetting as I mooched around Hyde Park taking photos.

Quick aside; I had some time on my hands, hence the photgraphy, and at around 5pm found an open door at the back of St Mary's Cathedral. I wandered in and stood to one side as a priest and single choir boy started to sing to the mostly empty cathedral. A few people came in, crossed themselves with holy water and took a seat. There is something undeniably and beautifully moving about choral music. And that is coming from an atheist. I remember wandering around the City of London in 2010 and chancing upon a church with music drifting out. I stood for several minutes enjoying the sound and the feeling, if not the lyrics...

Anyway, I got changed into my runing gear and met Andrew at his hotel at 18:00. We bid farewell to Geoff, Andrew's suited colleague and head off into the now dry evening. Having left my GPS at home I was entrusting my mileage logging to my Blackberry. Despite being my least favorite device it showed me no ill will; GPSLogger started, discovered the device GPS and told me where I was.

I'll not dwell on the details of the run. Reading about two middle aged blokes running 16km and chatting is hardly the stuff of best-sellers. So briefly, we ran from Hyde Park to the Bridge and then took most of my usual commute route. It was a little quicker than I'd usually run, but I usually run alone and allow myself a lazy plod. At Spit Bridge, and en-route to our destination of Manly Wharf I presented Andrew the option of a lift back to the City. He chose, as I would have, to keep going to Manly. The ferry offers a far nicer trip through Sydney than my car. And besides, from Seaforth to Manly is almost all downhill, easy miles.

We arrived at the wharf in just under 10miles. To avoid a (friendly, online) flaming Andrew needed to get over 10miles. We ran around the block to the ocean-side and then back to the wharf. Andrew offered me a beer, but needing to get home (I'd ben lucky to get an evening pass on a Tuesday!) and as I am having a dry July I declined. (For the record I'm not "doing" Dry July, just having a dry July after a wetter-than-strictly-necessary June.) It was a close call; I'd have loved a beer and chat. We said our farewells and I headed back up the hill home.

I'd not got far before it occurred to me that I hadn't taken a picture of the two of us. I was carrying 4 cameras in my backpack. Yes, FOUR. Ah well, that will have to wait until next time. For now, it was a thoroughly enjoyable run with a damn fine bloke. I'll have to get back into Twitter to keep tabs on my now real, flesh-and-blood friend.

Little Manly and Two Creeks

To finish of New Years Day I went for a run. Somewhat masochistic as the temperature was still hovering around 34degrees. But the humidity was low, and although gasping hot air was not pleasant the run was somewhat easier than I'd expected; not sure how I would have felt if I'd pushed the distance beyond the 11km I ran, or if the temperature hadn't started to drop a little towards the end.

Jump forward to yesterday and another run I managed to negotiate. Sal is close to popping the bub and I now have to be careful not to run too far away or for two long. Yesterday afternoon, when Sal needed a rest, I grabbed a two hour slot in which I completed an 18km run, 5km being the Two Creeks Track from Lindfiled Oval to Roseville bridge, the rest getting to the oval and back from the bridge on road. Very pleasant, if somewhat hilly and sweaty. The 5km bush track is quite easy with only a couple of small climbs. Once it gets to the water it follows the watercourse and is quite pretty. I completed the run (18km) in a little over 100mins and drank only water on the go. I felt quite knackered at the end; I think my water threshold, after which I really should carry sports drink, is about an hour, especially in the heat of the day. I got home to find Sal on the sofa somewhat angry; for a change her anger was directed not at me, but the Pearl Harbor (the movie, not the place.) Sal has a very high tolerance for low quality movies but Pearl Harbor had pushed beyone even her limit.

We'd started the day in Little Manly. Sal and Susan had remained landside while JCJ and I jumped in the water and snorkelled around the left-side headland.The water was warm and a bit green; vis was around 4-5m, but as depth was rarely greater than 5m that was hardly an issue. Where it was deeper I found sand, sand and more sand, so we stayed shallow where we found, as well as fish, a kids bike, a motor bike, a couple of shopping trolleys, the remains of two cars, various other random metal things and a bathtub. Got to love diving in the Harbour. There was also a little too much fishing line and lots of fish. To begin with there were a few bits, but when we got ot the rocks at the point there were schools of jeuvenille mackeral and yellowtail, some small old wives and the odd stingary. Around the point I found an octopus and more bits and then we found a large - very large - schhol of anchovy. There were a couple of what looked like small kingfish eyeing the fry off. There were alos loads of hula fish, jeuvenille puller (that look quite tropical) and a lone, very small stripey. It was fantstic. As well as the fishiness we were treated to kids taking a 20ft drop from a lookout and yachts coming in and out of the bay. The shore line was a vertical rock wall that, if you swam close wnough, had you swimming under low hanging tree branches. The light through the branches hitting oyster-shell-covered rocks in slightly green water put me in mind of National Geographic shows on crocodiles. Silly really, far more chance of coming across a shark.

Around 40mins in we turned and returned to shore, the womanfolk and coffee. Along a vertical and, above water featureless but underwater pretty wall I swam half in and half out of the shadows. The wall cast a 45degree shadow over the kelp in the very shallow water. A lovely effect. All said, I really should go back with a camera. Another interesting part of Sydney discovered.

Happy New Year

Up typically early to take the dogs for a walk, a DVD back and to prepare to head for the ocean, I was feeling a little dusty but a Berocca later I was feeling fine. The temperature was due to hit 34degrees on 2009 day 1, so a cooling dip was the perfect start. Sal took 10 minutes to get from bed to car and at a little after 8am we left to collect JCJ and Susan and then head to Manly where we would be meeting Hempy for a swim.

The ocean was flat and blue and the air was warm-becoming-hot. We met a returning Josie and Jason plus Josie's folks whose names I seem unable to commit to memory. They had already been for a splash, Josie's Dad test driving his new prescription lens mask. Apparently the water was not as warm as it looked, nor as blue, but it was nice. We would discover that for ourselves; JCJ and Hempy, resplendent in camo-pants wetsuits and I in my full-black-seal suit took to the water while Sal and Susan took to a cafe.

Hempy, in his younger days, never seemed to feel the cold. That's not quite true; he did seem to feel the cold but he never admitted it. You had to pick up on the subtle tell-tale signs; he'd be blue and shivering uncontrollably. However, since moving to the tropics the lad has softened somewhat and felt no shame in letting the real men know how cold he thought the water was. To be fair he didn't whine that much but it was refreshing to see him behave like a mortal.

As Sal had a chaperon and as the water was really very flat we decided to swim over to the point, some 150-200m away. I did have the occasional sharky thought, what with a Great White having been spotted nearby only a couple of days earlier. That even made the news back in Blighty. The water was not super clear; in places it reminded me of the water colour you see on video from Dyer Island. But the thoughts didn't linger. In fact I was thinking more about the dive float JCJ had brought. The line attached to his float was only marginally longer that the blades of his fins. As is customary, we gave JCJ some abuse for that, hence starting the new year in pretty much the same way we'd ended the old one - taking the piss.

New Year, new policy...divelog entries will be entered into the main blog...cannot really be arsed to maintain two blogs dedicated to what I do...maybe I'll add a summary link to the other blog...whatever...

The water was neither particularly clear or fishy as we made our way over to the point, but it was pleasant. We didn't duck under the surface much until we got to the rocky reef of the point. There were a few leatherjackets, hula fish (so Hempy was happy), I found a porcupine fish, Hempy found a ray, there were yellowtail, some mullet, blackfish. The usual suspects. JCJ didn't point out as much as he usually does, possibly because he was tethered to the surface by a shoe lace length of rope (hahaha!) Not wanting to spend too much time out to sea, in case Sal went into labour, we headed back after 30 or 40mins. On our return we dropped down to the bottom of the rock pile and discovered that Jason had been telling the truth; at 4m the water temp dropped from its 22ish degrees on the surface to a around 19degrees. Enough to be noticeably cooler. Noticeably more green as well. We dropped down to the bottom a few times, a mere 8.5m below. Deep enough for me to feel like my lungs would pop after a few seconds (I was not having a great day) and shallow enough for Hempy to stop, look around, read a few pages of a book and make a few phone calls before inching his way back to the surface. Git.

With no sign of the ladies ashore as we returned to the Bower we decided to head over to its rocky reef to swim with the yellowtail and allow Hempy to have another brief whinge about the water temperature. To be fair, it was 10degrees cooler - colder? - than he is used to. Git.

JCJ looked as if he was getting run over - well, swum over - by a group of swimmers headed to Shelly Beach from Manly. From a distance it looked quite amusing. His head bobbed about a little way off from his float and swimmers looked as if they were heading between the two. I conjured up mental images of angry swimmers screaming at the bloke who had decided to roper the bay off. But it was all friendly and peaceful and before long we spotted the ladies wandering back from the cafe we would soon wander to.

We climbed out of the water into the now very warm air, ditched the neoprene and headed into Manly for breakfast at Cafe Steyne which has mixed reviews but I like. Lots of beach fronts are becoming homogeneous and bland. Big open sliding doors, check. Whitewashed walls, check. Chunky wooden tables, check. Sparse artwork on walls, typically quite average, often far sale, usually overpriced, check. Small portions on big plates, check. Cafe Steyne isn't like that. It's more old skool. A bit run down, iffy furnishing, iffy service, decent serving sizes, decent enough coffee, kids books and toys stacked (well, slung) in a corner and a view of the ocean. Suits me just fine. I had the big breakfast and Sal's left over ( = most of it) fruit toast.

Saying so makes me feel hungry. I'm off to find some breakfast.