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.