My super spoopy Halloween adventure!

Alright, so I lied. Today I went on a magical adventure, but it wasn’t related to Halloween. Nor was it spoopy, let alone super spoopy.

My adventure was, however, loosely running-related. So I’m gonna write it here. And you’re gonna read it here. Unless you don’t want to. Which is totally fine too. Because I guess I did start this post under false pretences, and a facade of completely disingenuous spoopiness. So I won’t mind if you stop reading.

Right? Okay.

So I’ve been using this fancy pedometer thingie called a Fitbit. You wear it in a belt clip during the day (which I attach to my bra, because pedometer boobs) and it measures how many steps you’ve taken and how many floors you’ve climbed. You can also wear it in a wristband overnight and it records the quality of your sleep supposedly. Then there’s all these calorie county things and water intake things and stuff on the iPhone app. Altogether awesome if you like micromanaging absolutely everything about your life.

One downside to the Fitbit is that it has this proprietary charger that it needs a blast from every week or so. Being that I wear it every day, I tend to forget about it and thus forget to charge it at night. So one day I took my charger to work. Of course then the charger disappeared and I had to buy another one online.

I’ll just stop here to say that most of the preceding two paragraphs weren’t entirely necessary to my story, I just wanted the opportunity to whinge about how much I had to pay for the stupid thing. $30 bucks! Frigging ridiculous. And yeah, I did find the other charger. About six hours after I ordered a new one. It was in a pile of shoes on my bed, in a shopping bag with a mouldy carrot.

They apparently ‘attempted delivery’ of my new charger yesterday. I put that in inverted commas because I was sick at home yesterday and they didn’t even bother to knock. Didn’t leave a card either, but that’s no big surprise.

I found out about the attempted delivery online today, got permission to leave work early so I could head by the Watson post office after work to grab it. The Watson post office closes at 5pm (5pm SHARP, according to the sign in the post office) so I gave myself a good hour to get there and do my business.

I’m not sure if the bus was late or didn’t show or I just let it breeze on past me as I waited, but I found myself sitting in the bus interchange five minutes after I should have been out on the road, kinda pissed off. On a spur of the moment impulse, I decided to get on one of the Gungahlin buses, as I knew there was a stop out on Northbourne Avenue 1.2km away from the shops. I’d have plenty of time for a leisurely stroll down Phillip Avenue towards the Watson shops, right?

Nope.

So rush hour traffic kinda sucks, and impatience doesn’t help, apparently. I got to the bus stop on Northbourne at 4:53pm. Hell, even if I was wearing proper running gear and shoes it would’ve been a hell of a workout to run all the way to the shops that fast. Now you know I’m an idiot, because I’ve mentioned it before. I could couch this all in super motivational awesome “Never give up!” terms, but I know that’s bullshit. I’m just stubborn. And an idiot. I got off the bus and ran for it.

Today I was wearing a black minidress. And pantyhose. And calf-high boots. I was carting a handbag, and a shopping bag full of plastic containers. I was wearing headphones which were constantly on the verge of falling out. I’m describing this so you can maybe envisage just how freaking ridiculous I must have looked as I sprinted, nay, stumbled in ungainly fashion but seemingly impressive speed across a green grassy field which was probably an overgrown oval. That scene was just crying out for a slow-mo panning shot. Just spectacular.

I made it to the Watson post office at (and I shit you not) precisely 4:59 and 45 seconds. Fifteen seconds left. I repeat. Spectacular. And here’s the kicker.

I got there just in time to pick up this box:



I don’t know how well that picture translates, but simply put it’s a freaking huge box, with a tiny plastic Fitbit charger all the way down the bottom. I mean... Seriously? All this shit I went through, for something they could’ve crammed in a standard size envelope and put in my mailbox?

Moral to this story is blah blah never give up, blah blah Halloween, and I hate this particular courier company. I need some wine.

These things suck: a breakdown

In future, I should definitely try to leave my grumpy pants at home when I go for a run.

In the almost two and a half hours of my long run this morning, I constructed a list of the ten most annoying things in the world at that particular point in time.

1. My shoes are crunchy.
   • I ran Tough Mudder a couple of weeks ago, and for some inexplicable reason decided to wear my good shoes. I washed them thoroughly afterward, but they’re still very stiff and uncomfortable because of the left-over mud.
2. My bra is pissing me off.
   • The straps fall off my shoulders because I didn’t adjust them properly. I had to stop at one point for an impromptu striptease so I could fix the bra. Didn’t really work.
3. I lost my handkerchief, somewhere.
   • Think it fell out of my stupid bra.
4. My nose is running like a broken tap.
   • Despite the hayfever tablets. Where the hell did all that snot come from?
5. The sunscreen is stinging my eyes.
   • I think I’m allergic to it. However...
6. I’m getting sunburnt anyway.
   • Sigh.
7. My feet hurt.
   • There’s this weird stretchy pain in my left foot, I can’t really describe.
8. Everyone keeps trying to run me over.
   • Yes, lady in the hotel carpark. I AM running past you. Why do you look so shocked? Perhaps you shouldn’t be staring at that cyclist the whole time.
9. Cyclists!
   • There is not enough room on a tiny concrete footpath for me and you on your recumbent bicycle. Also, yes, I am as far over on the left of the path as I can be. Stop yelling at me. While this would normally be the absolute worst thing in the world during most runs, there was one more event blew the worst cycle-clown hijinx out of the water.
10. A bunch of old people in a car are taking a Sunday morning drive down the footpath.
    • Seriously, this shit is TERRIFYING.

In the end, I managed to pull out a respectable 21 kilometres in a fairly respectable time of about 2:25. And I got over my grumpies, eventually.

Moral of this story is that old people are scary, and even though I can sometimes get a run in on a Sunday, I’m sure as hell not going to be happy about it.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled suckage

By the time I was conscious enough to be temporally aware, I already knew I wouldn’t be running this morning. Late nights and early mornings don’t mix, and nor does the intention to run 20 kilometres mix with the Saturday morning farmer’s market out at the showground or a particularly early driving lesson. Perhaps if I were disciplined enough to get my lazy ass out of bed at 5am (at the very latest, mind you) I wouldn’t feel like such a lump. Four hours of sleep, though? Forget about it.

As it turned out, I woke up too late even to hit the markets before I went out for my driving lesson.
So in a nutshell, Saturdays and running aren’t working out for me. At all. The problem with that is that getting myself to run on Sundays has always been even harder than my current Saturday issue. I stay up late on Saturdays, always. I drink, most of the time. Sleeping in on a Sunday is a basic human right, goddamnit.

I don’t know what to do about that. I can always manage a run or three during the week at lunchtimes, rain or shine. My long slow run which should be the highlight of my week is the major issue here. Hmm. This’ll take some thought.

I decided to go for a walk to wake myself up, as I’m such a perfect specimen of physical fitness I was taking a random nap on the couch at about 1pm this afternoon. I felt like heading up the mountain, but I had no cake to eat on the mountain. This is a great example of how lazy I am right now. I won’t hike because I don’t have cake. I don’t see how those things should really be related, but that’s the way I felt at the time. There is no bakery on the mountain, so I decided to go to the shops and buy cake and maybe then go up the mountain if I had time.

About halfway toward the mountain (which I lost track of at one point as they’d put all these houses in the way and there were no paths I could find), I stopped to wonder exactly why I was doing this. Did I feel like I needed to hike in order to deserve cake? I certainly wasn’t enjoying myself. As the sun tried it’s best to burn right through my layer of sunscreen and my poorly-chosen jeans chafed against my sweat-soaked asscrack, I felt very fat and bloaty and old. To avoid feeling guilty about sitting on the couch all day, I’d told myself “I need to walk”, but does an hour and a half up a mountain constitute appropriate penance? Especially as there was cake involved?

I did enjoy myself eventually, sitting in the shade and staring down at the airport as I demolished two almond fingers and an apple.

I like almond fingers.

I feel doubly guilty now, though. I gave some very incoherent directions to a bunch of hikers. So they’re probably still up there now, completely lost.

Drained

To be ‘thin’ and to be ‘fit’ are two different things, and they don’t necessarily go together. ‘Thin’ is all about meeting unrealistic societal expectations, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re healthy. Fitness is about striving for your body’s maximum potential. Become fit, and you become healthy. Yes, you aim to get thin and find fitness along the way. But isn’t it far more rewarding to aim to be fit, to build your muscles, your speed, and your endurance, and maybe lose some body fat without even thinking about it, simply because you don’t need it anymore?

That wasn’t really going anywhere. Just a random thought. I think it’s inspired by my lack of weight loss even though my fitness is heading forwards in leaps and bounds. Trying to get some optimism into the mix here.

I’m feeling exhausted right now. Mind and body. I went to Bikram yoga on Thursday, and although it was exhilarating at the time, I wasn’t in the best of shape on Friday morning. Saturday, I knew I was in trouble in the first kilometre of my long run. I kept at it, shuffling away in a dismal state of mind. Zombies kept me somewhat distracted, but it really hurt when I hit the turnaround point and faced down the last 10 km. Took two short walking breaks in the last 2 or 3 kms. But I made it home. Barely.

Today I went to Bikram again. Legs were still stiff from the run yesterday, and I have this deep down fatigue, right down to my bones. The class wasn’t easy, but I felt better when I got out. Previous experience tells me that I’m not going to be feeling so flash tomorrow morning.

A bit of news… I’ve gone and signed up for a half marathon the week after next. God knows what I was thinking. I probably wasn’t thinking. I guess I’d better start tapering. And, I’d probably better cool down with the hot yoga for a couple of days before the race.

I'm gonna hate myself in the morning

Okay, so when I start talking about DOMS in this context, I’m not talking about relationship dynamics. Although, I’ve been pushing myself so hard lately that surely I fit somewhere along the BDSM spectrum.

Anyway. I digress. DOMS. Delayed onset muscle soreness. That wonderful sore achy everything-hurts feeling that occasionally has me lying awake in bed of a morning, groaning and wishing I could just roll over and go back to sleep, except that would involve moving. I get it in my legs, my arms, my back, my shoulders. Pretty much everything at the moment, because I’ve been working out every day. Some days harder than others. Is it the twinge of muscles repairing? Is it lactic buildup? I’m not sure. I should look it up, but I’m not too keen to explore a google-cavern right now as it’s almost bedtime and my tea’s getting cold.

My left shoulder, currently, is a bit of a worry. It’s been hurting for a couple of days now. It twinges when I finish a set of pushups, and this became a lot more noticeable when I did 10 sets of 10 the other day. Yes, I do believe I’m a bit of a masochist, thanks for asking. I did a couple of trial sets of spiderman pushups afterward, and the twinge made me stop. It’s still there, so I’ve eased up a bit in response. I’m hoping this is actually just muscle soreness, and not something worse. That shoulder pops out all the time (not full dislocation, just a sort of semi-out-of-jointedness) and even the exercises that the physio gave me so long ago don’t really seem to strengthen it much. Maybe I’m going too hard.

I am building massive guns, though. Biceps may be glamour lifting, but there’s nothing like getting a little arm definition to boost the old self-esteem. I’ll take pictures. Eventually. Consider it a work in progress.

I will need a barbell, soon.

I’m hoping to get up and run in the morning but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. It’s kind of freezing out there in the morning. Yesterday’s run was okay because it was a little later, no beanie required but gloves and a hoodie were standard uniform. Took the gloves off halfway through but I could feel my hands stiffening up so I put them back on again. The hoodie only went around the waist for my final sprint. I’m quite happy with my recovery. 15km in not too bad a time, about an hour and forty minutes. Not exactly Speedy Gonzales, but I’m getting there. Starting to think about maybe hitting a half next month, as I missed the one earlier this month and that makes me sadface. I could always do with another medal.

Well, this tea ain’t gonna drink itself, and this Doctor Who certainly ain’t gonna watch itself.

Grown-up things and suckage

I have this stupid mental block when it comes to doing anything that might be considered as responsible or grown-up. You know, just like pretty much everyone else on the planet. I procrastinate like crazy when I have things to do. Washing. Cleaning. Working out. My favourite pastimes and hobbies. Wait, what?

I’ll amend the following statement. I USED to have a stupid mental block when it comes to doing responsible or grown-up stuff. Now I just seem to have a natural aversion to doing anything. At all. I hope this is just a bout of seasonal laziness coming to the fore rather than a symptom of something more serious going on. Maybe I’m just in a funk, but given the choice between doing something (like guitar, reading, writing) and doing absolutely nothing, I’ll probably keep staring at that TV screen until I turn into an extension of the couch.

I’m probably over-reacting. I mean, the house is pretty spotless. Well, mostly. If you don’t look at the kitchen. I may not have washed my clothes in a little while, but I know there are still underpants in my room somewhere. I didn’t get up to run this morning when my alarm went off, but I woke up at 5am and it was raining. I took the choice to stay in a toasty warm bed. I shouldn’t be beating myself up for it or screaming “ENTROPY!” into the cruel and uncaring sky.

Seasonal laziness. That’d be it. I’m stressed about stuff, but I’m not going on some nihilistic bender.

I did run this afternoon. First thing after I got home. I changed, did some jumping jacks to get the blood pumping and headed out into the admittedly chilly evening to evade some zombies and gather supplies to rebuild my town. Nice 5km dash. Not too slow.

It is getting kinda dark at night, though. I gotta say that when I run in the morning I’m usually less jumpy than I am if I run at night. I mean, what kind of psycho would be lurking in the park at 6:00 in the morning? They’re all too tired, from lurking in the park until 2:00 in the morning. That’s when the park gets too boring, and even psychos gotta sleep sometime.

I had this whole concept that I was going to write about, and I swear I had some sort of point, but I think I’ve forgotten. And I’m too lazy to try to get back to the point, so I guess I’ll get off my fat ass and go to bed. After I wash the dishes, I guess.

Grr.

I hate being an adult.

From the ashes

It’s been several months, yes. What happened? I’d like to blame this on the bout of appendicitis I had in early March, which led to subsequent chopping out of said appendix and subsequent recovery from said chopping out. But I know that would be a pile of crap. My last entry was about a month prior to that. No, I’ve been neglecting my blog for a far less understandable reason.

Basically? I lost all my enthusiasm for running. I burned out. Sad, no? I told myself I didn’t have anything interesting to write about because I wasn’t doing anything interesting, while ignoring the fact that nothing I do is really interesting anyway, but it’s my job to turn this dull and meaningless chore that is running into a fun-filled adventure.

I would get up in the morning and run, but it was getting later and later because I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed when I needed to go. My runs would get shorter and shorter because I actually had things to do later on, which was why I tried to get up earlier. It was a cavalcade of fail, ladies and gentlemen and other. Maybe this bout of potentially life-threatening infected internal organ nonsense was actually the kick in the ass I needed. Wait, not the ass. A kick in the stomach? Yeah, felt like one.

I was told when I was in the hospital that I wouldn’t be able to work out for a month. This wasn’t an ideal situation, and even though you’d think I’d be relieved to take a little running holiday (and also miss the Canberra Half Marathon, incidentally) it was endlessly frustrating.

It was only about three weeks before I started to work out again, albeit carefully, and at the start of this month I jumped back into the running with newfound gusto and also a newfound lack of fitness. Wow, I deteriorated really, really quickly. Week before last, I could barely manage 5 kilometres. Last week, I managed 10 in a relatively decent time but couldn’t manage sprints. This morning I did 10 kilometres without a rest, and although I’m getting back in stride I still hated it on behalf of my lungs.

One fun part was that I decided to run the last kilometre as fast as I could. Managed half a km before a collapsed lung… Okay, that’s a bit dramatic. It just hurt, so I stop. In any case, I managed the 500m in 2 minutes flat. Not bad.

I have to go out shortly, so I’ll cut this short but I guess half the battle was actually sitting down in front of my computer to write anything. It’s hard to admit that you’ve been lazy when the admission takes effort.

Next time, I’ll get in some egotistical bullshite about how good looking I think I am. That’ll be something to look forward to.

Or maybe I’ll talk about pirate costumes.

At the very least, I intend to come back. I can work out every day, and have done so for the last 20 days (I may talk about that, actually) so I know I can form habits if I’m committed enough.

Butt Kickery

I’ve been so tired lately. I didn’t turn my alarm clock on for this morning, because I was up a bit late last night. ‘Late’ being after 10pm. Yes, I’m Ned Flanders. The secret is out.

Anyway, if I was so determined to wake up late, I probably should have also been determined not to run this morning. But I did run. Wow, 8am is a lot hotter than 5am, genius. What a great idea. Next time, try running at midday and see how you like that. Felt like dashing off and throwing myself in the pond. Note to Gungahlin: Where’s my aquatic centre, bitch? Seriously, you could have made a lot of money by now, solely from me.

I did make the effort to completely smother myself in sunscreen from head to foot, trying to ignore the searing pain I got when the sunscreen went on my eyelids. Yeah, think that might be an allergy. I totally did my part though. Slip, slop, slap, and all that crap. Even though I’m probably going to have a big swelled-up face all day. And what did the sunscreen do for me? Diddly, and shit. The few parts of my body that aren’t lobster red look like I’ve been caught in a tragic spray-tan factory explosion. All blotchy, and weird. I’m hoping that the skin tone will even out when I’ve cooled down a bit. Hopefully the red is just a reaction to the heat, and isn’t actually sunburn.

It was an enjoyable run, though. I got to try out my new toy, a Polar H7 Bluetooth heart rate monitor strap which so far has just been tested out on a couple of Insanity workouts. It integrates with Runkeeper, which is pretty sweet. I don’t need to wear a watch. I can just pair it with my phone and run. Anything which helps cut down on unnecessary gadget weight is great with me. And I just can’t seem to stand wearing a watch these days, for some reason.

Out on the run, my heart rate stayed at about 145 for the first couple of kilometres until I threw in a sprint. Not a hard and gruelling, lungs-screaming sort of sprint, just more of a full, hair-blowing-in-the-wind stride. I call it a hero stride. When your whole body is moving with perfect form, and you glide over the path like a track superstar. It’s ego-boosty, although it probably doesn’t look as good to anyone else as it feels.

At this point, my heart rate hopped up to about 165-170 and didn’t go any lower for the remainder of my run, rather stubbornly I might add. At least this proves my new heart rate strap isn’t broken. After three days of maximum effort in my Insanity workouts and a pitiful max HR of 160, I was starting to think that maybe it was defective. In my run today I got to about 189 while sprinting for a little variety. I love the way that the Runkeeper audio cue voice gave me a hard time when I was in the 90-100% max HR bracket. She sort of exclaimed it, indignantly. As in, slow down, you stupid person. Or you’ll die!

I’ve come to a realisation. Even though I was dehydrated and my knee hurt and it was a little too hot to run, I wanted to get out there because when I’m running, that’s the one day of the week where I can crank up terrible music and listen to it without shame. I can bounce down the road happily blasting Top 40 crap, horrible pop sludge. It’s blissful. This is my one opportunity to hold my head high and listen to Taylor Swift without fear of recrimination. I still don’t get this whole Nicki Minaj thing, and to be honest she scares me a little, but if my streaming radio station plays one of her songs, I won’t necessarily turn it off. I can listen to Gaga, if I want to. I don’t usually want to. But I can. And I won’t feel embarrassed if I do. I can also give Justin free rein to bring sexy back. That’s Timberlake, mind you. Not Beiber. I do have to uphold SOME basic moral code. Ooh, and One Direction. *shudder* No. Never.

But up to a certain point, I can play the most abysmal crap while I’m running, and enjoy it immensely.

When I got in the door after my 12km run (in about an hour and seventeen minutes, not bad but not brilliant) I only had enough energy left to down a quick glass of water, turn on my bedroom fan and stick a towel down on the bed before collapsing in a puddle of sweat. I still haven’t eaten, or had a shower. So I should probably do that now. Because I smell.

Oh, and before I forget to mention. I’ve got a race coming up! Canberra Half Marathon, which I think is in April. I don’t think I can do another full Mara any time soon.

So, yeah. Whee!

This is not the Finish Line

Well, it’s a week later (and I blame the delay in posting on glycogen depletion) and up to about Thursday I had minor difficulty standing up and sitting down. Which is awesome. Because the difficulty was only minor, and my legs still work.

Marathon over, bitches! Yippee!

When I got to Tasmania, I was mostly happy (and ashamedly disappointed) that the race would be going ahead as planned. The air quality was great, and I think the wind was blowing the bushfires back on themselves. I may have drunk a little more than I should have in the few days before the race, and I also may have eaten badly. I was super-stressed about the race itself, and the drinking was as an alternative to thinking about it. When forced to think about it, I didn’t think I’d be able to finish. I anticipated pain.

I put off thinking about it for long enough that the night before the race I hadn’t even finalised the basics, like breakfast for the next morning, or how I was going to get to the race.

The breakfast issue didn’t get sorted until about 9pm on the night before the race, when I stumbled back to the hotel, fairly drunk, with some muesli bars and yoghurt I’d bought from a supermarket up the road. Not my finest moment.

The transportation issue sorted itself eventually, but I really should have planned better. I set my alarm for 3:45 and upon waking and groaning and swearing, I forced a nasty muesli bar and three quarters of a tub of unappetising yoghurt down my gullet before hitting the road and walking to the race hotel in hopes of catching the 4:45 coach to the start line. If not, there was a bus at 5:15, and an absolute last chance bus on 5:30. It was a fifteen minute walk over to the race hotel, actually a pretty good warmup, and I managed to get a seat on the first bus.

The weather was pretty freezing before the race. It was windy, pretty much par for the course as far as Hobart is concerned, and it looked like it was going to rain. I was loathe to check my bag too early, as I didn’t want to surrender my jacket. Man, I’m so not hardcore. Shivering out in the pre-dawn and whinging about the cold, hoping my painkillers would kick in before any possible hangover hit me (a hangover which never actually arrived, so I must have been relatively good the night before).

Before the start, I saw Cathy Freeman out by the portaloos. It was quite a treat. I thought that’d be the only chance I’d get to see her on the day, being as she was all athlete celebrity and everything. Yeah. I was kinda wrong.

I started out not very well. A little too fast, and I could tell it was too fast for me, but my GPS told me I was right on pace. So I felt like that was a fail, straight off the bat. I didn’t expect that I’d make it the whole way. I settled down into 6 minute kilometres, and told myself that I’d reassess a couple of kilometres down the road. My knees started to hurt. My shins started to ache. And I hadn’t even done the first two laps of the Cadbury estate yet, let alone started down the long out-and-back loop.

That really sucked.

I got an early second wind at about 3 kilometres, when the race announcer suddenly called out “And it’s Frankenberger! Frankenberger?”

I smiled and nodded at the guy, because he seemed a little confused. I’d forgotten for a moment that I was wearing my moniker emblazoned on my bib, like an elite. It gave me a little shock to hear someone call it out.

“Frankenberger. Okay then. Way to go, Frankenberger.” He said, after my confirmation. I don’t know why he was so befuddled by my name. It is actually a real surname, after all.

I coasted high on the wave of my own awesomeness for a while after that, mostly because I was heading downhill. A couple of water stops passed me by, I poured some water on my head, and my legs eased up on the niggles.

Then, about 12km in, after walking through a water stop, I saw a lady I’d met before the race and decided to pick up the pace a little to catch up with her and have a chat. Ran alongside her for two kilometres or so before I noticed that an awful lot of people were giving cheers and encouragements. I didn’t really think they were calling out to me. When someone said “Go Cathy!” I turned my head and realised that we’d been running right in front of Cathy Freeman for some time. And I’d overtaken her after the water stop.

That’s something kinda cool. It sort of fell apart later as I had to take a bathroom break, but it was definitely an experience, and the first 20 kilometres were pretty dang fast because I wanted to stay ahead of the olympian. So sue me. I’m silly.

The race went downhill in the second half, figuratively speaking (as the course tended more toward the uphill). It wasn’t so much that my lungs weren’t keeping up, but everything just started to hurt and it seemed a whole lot harder. I got a blister maybe 20 kilometres into the race, on the sole of my right foot. The sock was dragging across it, and it hurt like a bitch. Super fun-times were over.

30 kilometres in, I was pretty much done. It was windy, and cold, and I was on the verge of bonking (if not already there). Between here and the end of the race, I don’t know if I ran more than a kilometre at a time before having to take a walk break.

I do have to say one thing for the Cadbury Marathon, and that’s that the people were super nice. I chatted with a couple of folks before the race, and during the race I chatted with some more. Everyone was supportive, and awesome (apart from the girl who swore her head off at me, seriously, wtf? But I’m not going to hold it against her. She was hurting).

I’m sincerely relieved that it’s over. I didn’t run this weekend, because the lady who took the chip off my shoe at the end of the race while I sat there and sobbed told me that I could have a week off. I may run tomorrow. As much as it hurt, I can’t quite bring myself to swear off running entirely.

I’m just a glutton for punishment, aren’t I?

If I do actually run tomorrow, it’s not going to be great. I’ve been doing the Insanity workout DVDs. Lots of plyometrics. My legs won’t be very fresh.

Here, have some photos:

This is me before the race. The very face of determination. And enormous sunglasses. And horrible iPhone camera.

This is me coming into the finish. Gosh, I look happy. Probably because I know my legs won’t need to be amputated.

And this is me with my best bud. Aww. I think my face was actually frozen like that. Some sort of grim rictus. Lovely.

Welcome to Suck-Town

Heading off to Tasmania on Thursday, so I guess I should be packing my bags right now. Instead, I’m eating popcorn and watching Total Recall.

Yup. Quality time wastery. What can I say? It’s my specialty. I’ve been determinedly virtuous all year so far (7 days, a good enough record). Eating well, exercising, TV and computer off by 9, in bed by 10… But I’ve got too many worries in my head to be Little Miss Perfect tonight. In fact, I think I may well go and pour myself a gin.

I know it’s counterproductive to worry about things that you can’t change. Funnily enough, knowing that won’t help me stop. Here’s a brief summary:

1. On Saturday, I did a bunch of squats and lunges and jump squats and jumping jacks and a whole lot more of the leg-punishing variety. My legs still hurt like a bitch, and they’re still stiff. I mean… Still? Are you frigging kidding me? I did some yoga yesterday and it was seriously uncomfortable. I don’t know why my legs are still messed up.
2. The Tasmania bushfires. I don’t know what the current state of affairs is over there, but at the very least it may be smoky on race day. I hate to admit it, but for a few short minutes I hoped that the race would be cancelled so I wouldn’t have to do it. The fact that it isn’t cancelled makes me sad, and it makes me sad that it makes me sad. And so on and so forth.
3. I don’t think I trained enough. Actually, scratch that. I KNOW I didn’t train enough.

I’m going to finish my gin, and I’m going to finish this movie, and then I’m going to go and lay out all my clothes on the floor and try to figure out what I’ll be wearing in Tasmania. Then I’m going to find my e-book reader charger. If I had a cigarette, then I’d probably smoke it. But I don’t have any cigarettes, and that wouldn’t be very good for my running ability in any case.

Maybe when I’m packing, I’ll start to get excited about the trip.

Maybe I’ll become so overcome by the minutiae of packing and unpacking and checking and repacking, and unpacking again and checking then finally repacking that I’ll stop panicking about the race and fall asleep from exhaustion.

Earlier, Jetstar tried to tell me that my flight on Thursday was cancelled, even though it actually wasn’t (as determined in a hysterical phone call to a lovely young fellow in the call centre). I’ve had enough of this stress for one evening. I think the movie is about done, so I’d better get my butt into gear.

Guh. Not sure why I do this to myself. Would someone please remind me?

Hippo Nao Yarr

So… Ah… I’ve been drinking a lot of water lately.

So that’s awesome.

Need to pee a lot, but I guess you get that when you drink a bunch of water. My new boss must think I’m a lazy bitch, as I spent a lot of today either eating (just fruit and stuff) or getting more water, or going to the bathroom.

I drank like three litres today. Maybe.

…

Where the fuck did December go, by the way? I was rocking my way through November, and then bam, just like that, it was happy new year time and drinking and smoking and eating and being all chubby and shit and I can swear someone stole the last month of my life.

I’m getting my act together, but being healthy is going to suck balls for a really long while until I get back in the zone. The sad part is that I don’t have enough time to get into the zone before the Cadbury Marathon in a week and a half. I need to be more positive about it, probably, but I’m fairly sure I’m gonna be in a world of hurt. Re-reading my entry about last year’s Cadbury Half, I’m only sure of one thing - the need to sunscreen the top of my head. I wish I were more verbose about my race summary posts, if only as a reminder of how sucky a particular event was. If that’s all I managed to take out of it, it wasn’t particularly useful.

That reminds me. I need to buy sunscreen.

You know what I really want right now? The freedom to run without being in training for something. I’d love to just wake up in the morning and be all “I’ma gonna run 20km!” rather than waking up and groaning and whinging about having to run 20km.

Ah well, I guess Tasmania is gonna be fun. I like Hobart. It’s a pretty town.