Thursday, 10 February 2011

The Last Couple of Months

It has been awhile since I've posted here. In that time, I ran the Sydney marathon (3hrs 34min), been learning Norwegian each day, finished reading Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science, and  Contact; have finished another batch of homebrew and finally sawed through the lock on my bike for which the keys had disappeared.

The marathon took place on September 18th this year on a slightly different course from previous ones. Weather conditions were far from ideal, the temperature reaching 31 degrees centigrade by the time most people were coming through the finishing line. As usual i started way too quickly and 30 km into it was in pieces.  I’m not sure what went wrong, as I'd done alot of 35km+ runs in my training and was comfortable with a faster pace than i managed on the day. I was expecting to finish around 3 hrs 15 mins, so to be over 20 mins slower was rather baffling.  Am putting it down to the heat (+big blisters) or maybe too much running in the in last couple of weeks + groin strain. At the end of the day, that was my fourth marathon, i know I'll do a fifth someday, but i found the training rather consuming me in the last 8 weeks, so may leave it a couple of years.

Here is a picture from yesterday, I'd taken Jessica for a walk around the cliffs of Coogee. She is now unbelievably crawling and walking; the rate of change is just astonishing.

 

Out and about

 

Today is Sunday, tomorrow is a public holiday, Labour Day in Australia i think. I intend on doing very little, other than nursing a mild hangover i picked up after watching England narrowly beat Scotland in the Rugby World Cup.