Here today, gone......

Yes, Tomorrow I'm leaving on holidays. I'll be back September 1st. I'll be able to continue to read and comment on your blogs which is great, I don't need a holiday from you lot, yet ;)

And I'll continue to run so all I can say now as I sink the last bottle of beer in my home frig, pack the sun tan lotion and a spare lycra thong, is "I love yous all!"

Talk soon.

Can you guess where I'm going? A souvenir to the person that gets it right. The photo above and this post are the only clues. If that is not enough I'll leave you with my favorite Sherlock Holmes quote as said to dear old Watson "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear."

Time for a holiday

I thought I'd post something that I could relate to. This is from a blog of a woman "Binary Blonde" I read her blog every now and then but never comment, shame on me, anyway It's good to know that apart from "runners" there are many interesting/kind/sensitive/funny people out there.

Some cheese with that whine.

Recently been reading about how cold it is in Australia now from those there and I sympathise as I know how hard it is to get going on those cold early mornings.

Here it is the end of the monsoon season about 30 degrees and 90% humidity. Running it this is certainly a challenge and it's only comfortable between 3 and 4AM. Still we all have our crosses to bear ;)

I fell off the high mileage wagon last week with a BBQ and hangover and a bit of ITB pain I thought I'd better have a bit of a rest. So now day 4 without a run and not only do I feel out of condition, I feel a cold coming on. And to top this off I've put on close to 2kgs in 5 days!

It's really a constant battle , isn't it? Just got to keep moving to even stay in place. Well no matter what I'm back into it tomorrow I can't let this go on too much longer as I don't like feeling like this anymore. Now I can't be happy unless I feel healthy and fit. I fear the consequences of inaction and I'm no longer much tempted by the lure of inactivity.

Warning: Not a substitute for human interaction

Hi sorry for the delay in posting. Although I don't think I'm upsetting too many people ;) I'd like to get more comments but I think that's not going to happen until I either get a decent personality or break 2 hours for the marathon.

Anyways, things are good here building up my weekly mileage without breaking down. 68kms last week and going to go close to 80kms this week. I want to get up around 100kms a week and do this for a few months before my racing season starts in early Oct. We will see how it goes I have never done a 100k week. I usually run pretty low mileage but I think that it's time to try out this high mileage stuff everyone is talking about. You never know I might thrive on it, Tesso tells me that she does, when she's not nursing an injury that is.

This means running in all conditions and I had an interesting experience today in relation to this. A big Typhoon is on the way here and they locked the gate on the track at the local university today. It was pissing down and no one around so I jumped the fence and begun with 3kms of warm up 6x 100 sprints and some 800m intervals. I had done two 800s the 1st 2:59, 2nd 2:49 when a couple of guys in suits with huge umbrellas came in and asked me, ever so politely, to leave as it was dangerous to run in such weather.

It wasn't dangerous of course but the Japanese are so bloody anal (perhaps why I like it so much here I'm a tad that way myself) they just get freaked out when things are done differently than usual. Still so polite they didn't ask me how I got in through the locked gate and who the bloody hell I was, and they looked quite pained to ask me to leave. I perhaps could have argued the point but I didn't have any right to be there even on a dry day and they were so bloody nice about asking me to go I just had to be nice back, and go!

Great thing about Japanese people on the whole is that they know that force will meet with force and often try to get their way with a softer approach not like the typical "white male" who will be abusive first and aggro later.

I don't include you white male runners with that lot. You're all just pale Kenyans to me. ;P

2000~2007 before and after running

Thanks for your positive comments vis a vis the youtube videos, I will tell you how I did it next post but believe me it's the easiest thing, otherwise I wouldn't of been able to do it.

Anyway I'm also experimenting with web albums and I put together this one of my progress from before I started running until today. You may agree that it has been a positive thing. To be frank I hardly know the old me anymore as I've change both inside and out.

Take a look at it here.

Just click to enlarge photos and follow the progression.

The Gold Coast Marathon is being held as I type, I really wish I could be there :(