Quickie

It’s late but I thought I should quickly update. The job is great – nice people, lovely offices, cheapo work canteen, interesting work and even some freebies

I went for a run before work yesterday but this morning the gale force winds put me off. Instead I popped into Fitness First at Knox – less than 10 mins away from work and, after my workout, the traffic is minimal. I definitely underestimated when I said it’d be a 30-40 min drive – well I didn’t account for peak hour traffic, most of which is in the section between my house and the Eastern freeway. It took me 20 mins to drive a section that would be a 10 minute walk the other morning!

I got the job!

I now have 4-6 weeks of living in clover! Woohoo! The temp agency people weren’t happy though and when they told my supervisor at my temp job, she came over and kicked me out! I said I’d finish up the day but she was like – “NO, go. NOW!’ So I said, ‘Fine, just sign my timesheet.’ It’s like dude, I’m only doing data entry, it’s not like there’s a steep learning curve.

The only bad thing about the new job is the 30-40 min drive each way but since my gym suspension at Fitness First ends on Wednesday, I figure I can go to the gym on the way home. I’m also planning some before-work runs even though it will kill me. And, yes I know that isn’t a long commute for most people but I’m used to walking to work (which actually takes about 45 minutes but it’s multi-tasking). Driving to work shits me because it requires concentration and focus.

Lousy Run

I went out for my 11 km run yesterday. I so didn’t feel like it and started off walking, thinking I’ll run soon, I’ll run soon. The plan was to run to Royal Park station then back to Princes Park for a lap then home. I hate running the section between Royal Park station and Princes Park with a vengeance – it’s got some nasty hills – and was almost tempted to do an extra lap of Princes Park instead but figure avoiding hills is cheating and, if I want to do the City to Surf this year, I need to run hills.

I felt miserable the whole time. I didn’t want to run, my sports bra was chafing, I was too cold then too hot. The whole run, I was a complete sooky la la. Then, on my lap around Princes Park, my knee started hurting a lot. I had those two voices – the tough one saying: ’stop whinging and keep running’ and the other one saying ’stop running now.’ I tried stretching and resting but it still hurt.

I think the tough voice is a good one to listen to when it comes to sooky fits but not for injuries and pains. I walked the last 4 kms and even that hurt. I’d have caught a tram home except that would have meant going into the city and back out again.

Luckily now I’m stiff and sore but it’s the regular, good soreness not injury soreness so I’m glad common sense won the day. I think the knee soreness come from having tight quads from the bike riding. My right quad felt tight as tight in the shower afterwards. I gave it a good, hard rub (that sounds vaguely dirty) and it’s fine now.

When I got home, I made my sister a big, birthday brunch of banana pancakes. Yum. I also made her a special birthday dinner of pot pie because I’m a legendary sister of much niceness. They have had this yummy sounding pie on the specials board at our fave cafe so I decided to to make my own version. It’s just vegies in cheese sauce with a pastry top. It even works out quite low in calories the way I made it.

I was going to do more running today, but think I’ll rest the legs and maybe just go to the gym and do some upper body work. I’ve got a stupid ‘take home’ test to do for class on copyright *yawn* so must get it done… boring, stupid copyright.

Dilemma

I’ve been offered a job pending reference checks. It’s a good job, 4-6 weeks with excellent pay and lovely offices. A fair hike out of the city which means driving and therefore no incidental exercise, but I can work around that with gym workouts and such.

The sticking pointing is the ‘pending references’ part of it. My supervisor from last job has, as they say on 24, gone dark. I rang him just the other day because my temp agency, after sending me out on a week’s assignment, decided they should do a referee check. He was happy to give me a reference and his phone was working just fine. Now he’s out of contact! Argggh.

My plan B reference has left his job so I called plan C. He’s on leave until Tuesday! Oh noes. Oh, did I mention they want me to start on Monday or Tuesday… mmmm. Well Tuesday now. It’s a worry. To make it harder, my old supervisor only works part time so is hard to contact except by mobile. The plan of attack now is to ring the switchboard on Monday and try to track him down. Failing that, I’ll see if I can get someone else there to give me a reference.

The other thorny issue is that I’ve agreed to do 2 weeks temp work starting Monday. Oh noes! Now to put things in perspective, the new job is 2-3 times longer and pays 150% more than the temp work so it’s no contest but if I have to pull out of the assignment, I reckon the temp agency will take me off their books. Again, in the grand scheme of things, no biggie. There are so many temp agencies out there. But I hate letting people down with a passion. Still big bucks are big bucks.

On to sunny things – since my legs felt ordinary, I skipped my long run today. I’ll make it up tomorrow. Instead I went for a bike ride. Yah! I went along the Merri Creek trail, thinking it’s really flat. It’s not good when being confidence-lacking bike rider to suddenly realise you have on one side of you a massive drop down to a rocky creek bed! But I did okay. The score so far:

Bike rides: 2 Bike accidents: 0

Woohoo! I did adventurous things too like riding on the flat without the brakes on and riding down little hills instead of walking. Some of the hills I walked down but then again, I walk down them when I’m running cos they are so steep. Oh yeah, and went I see a pothole, instead of thinking ‘yikes, I’m going to crash!’, I think ‘yikes, this will kill my butt!’

Kathy: I was going to say my bike doesn’t have gears but maybe it does. There are some lever things near the handlebars. Are they gears? Stop laughing. My last bike was my purple Malvern Star when I was 10. I’m still trying to deal with handlebar brakes instead of pedal ones.

Is it wrong that I can run faster than I ride? Oh well better to be slow than have a broken collarbone.

Today I checked out the website for the Great Victorian Bike. Yeah, I know I’ve only actually ridden my bike twice but it’s not until November. I can train a lot before then and it’s a nice week’s holiday. I’d like to do it if I can get my friends (and champion tent-putter-uppers) to come with me.

Pirates

I overdid it yesterday – damn you complimentary popcorn.

Short movie review = meh!

Longer review – good but far, far too long. It’s not even Pirates 3, it’s Pirates 2 part b… they could have edited 2 & 3 down to one decent 2 hour movie instead of having over 6 hours of too much filler and boring shit. Seriously, what do people want? They want action and fights and Johnny Depp with his shirt off. Not people sailing around talking about shit. And Kiera Knightly bugs me. You could happily skip the first hour and not miss much.

I’m so tired. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to go to a job interview. I went yesterday and they postponed it. To be fair, they had called me and I hadn’t checked my phone so they couldn’t do much more than that. I’m all interviewed out at the moment and have temp work for the next 2 weeks anyway so if I don’t get one of these jobs, it can wait.

I’d planned a long run today but my leg is sore so I’m not sure about it. I might have a nap and see how I feel later.

Ouch

Bike riding uses very different muscles to running… ouch, ouch… even different muscles to spin class … ouch, ouch, ouch!

Hey, has anyone else seen those “Free Paris” tee-shirts? I saw a girl wearing one the other day and nearly wet myself. Apparently the whole Free Paris campaign is based on it being wrong to lock her up because she adds beauty and style to the world so some such nonsense. Oh yeah, my life was beautified and styled after watching One Night in Paris!

I’m just waiting for the Simple Life/Prison Break crossover reality show, in which Nicky Hilton gets the prison plans tattoed on her body and tries to break Paris out.

Town Bike

I finally picked up my bike!!!! Woohoo! I have wheels.

I’ve been a bit of a chicken about it because I planned to do it before my friend’s went overseas so I thought I could con them into riding with me, but shit happened and they’ve gone. I’ve been a total sooky la la about picking it up and riding the 6 km home alone, but then I realised if they get back and I haven’t picked it up, they’d give me so much shit.

I walked over – 6 km, got the bike and my friend’s dad (who’s been conned into building them a new laundry while they are in Paris, nice work there) pumped up the tyres. I got on then got off, feeling really insecure. The thought of wheeling it down to the train station and catching the train home was sooooo tempting, then I told myself if I couldn’t ride the bike home, I couldn’t have a bike.

I wheeled it a ways, they live in an area with lots of trucks… then got on the bike path and rode a tiny bit, then got off and wheeled it over the big overpass. I did a mix of riding and wheeling between Flemington Rd and Royal Park – it’s very hilly. I thought I’d struggle with the uphills but ended up being fine, it’s the downhills that scare me. Just to get this straight, I even freak in spin class unless I have a lot of resistance on the bikes so if you translate that to situation where speed = falls = broken bones, you can imagine my girlie wimpiness.

Once I got to Princes Park, it was all very flat and easy. Except for stopping. I think the bike seat is too high cos I couldn’t put my foot on the ground without getting insanely painful cramps in the arches of my feet and sometimes my calves plus the real danger of being anally raped by the bike seat. Any hints on bike adjustments?

I was wonky and scared and had the breaks on most of the time but I made it home in one piece even when the stupid skank stopped wheeling her pram in the middle of the bike path and walked in front of me to check on her kid – like she couldn’t get off the path and do that. Must buy a bell cos it didn’t work.

My plan is to ride every day so I get good at it, well confident anyway.

Things

One interview down, one to go today. I wore my new skirt so that rocks – it’s worth having interviews if it means wearing my skirt. I wanted to wear a white cotton shirt with it but, as I’ve said before, I don’t own an iron. I figure it’s better not to wear a shirt if it’s not ironed so I wore a long sleeved tee-shirt which doesn’t look all that corporate but what can you do?

Words can’t express my excitement at the moment. I’ve been talking and thinking and plotting for a while about doing the half marathon at the Melbourne Marathon this year and now the new course is up. Suddenly, in my head, it’s gone from something I’m thinking about doing to something I’m going to do – I can do this.

I love that the new course starts in Richmond instead of down halfway to Frankston – it means more bed time for me beforehand. And I love that it finishes with a lap of the G.

There is a cut off time – 80 minutes I think for the first 11 kms. I freaked when I first read that then worked out the pace/km and compared it to my Run for the Kids time and it’s actually slower than that so I don’t think I’ll have a problem.

The plan is to stick to the program and not slack off with spazzy demotivation days… but to not get overzealous either. I think I went a bit crazy before R4tK – doing my planned training plus fitting in running days with friends, and that’s how injuries happen. I’ve got heaps of time so a sensible, consistent effort will pay off.

I realised on my run yesterday that my legs are faster than my fingers – because I can run to ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ by the Ramones but I can’t keep up with it when I play it in Guitar Hero! Makes sense I guess since your leg muscles are bigger and stronger than your finger muscles but you’d think years of typing would pay off.

And, a final woohoo – we got tickets for Pirates 3 for tomorrow. It’s not gold class because it’s Hoyts so it’s the Director’s Suite. They have some crazy system with La Premiere and Director’s Suite. Apparently La Premiere you get special seats in the regular cinema whereas DS is a separate cinema – same cost though. I can’t figure why you’d pay extra to be in the regular cinema. The whole point of paying more is to get away from all those annoying people with their uncontrolled kids. Director’s Suite is licensed too so you have to be over 18 to get in. Woohoo, no kids. Anita was worried about Andrew getting in until I reminded her he’s 20 years old – she was thinking he’s still a baby!

Run

Today I planned a 5 km run – my training program has “easy” runs and “relaxed” runs. What the hell is the difference?

Anyway, still lacking motivating but I forced myself out the door. I got halfway through my run and realised I was making good time so pushed myself and ended up with non-race pb of 31.30 mins for my 5 km run. My pb from Queen of the Lake last year was 30:36 so only a minutes difference and, considering all the wait times at traffic lights and cross streets I had today, I’m pretty darn impressed with myself.

Other than that, I’ve set up 3 job interviews and 2 weeks of temp work today. That’s mighty productive. And many opportunities to wear the new $90 skirt (I picked it up off layby yesterday).

Now I have to get my sister fired up and ready – we’re going to get gold class tix for Pirates of the Carribean for her birthday this week, if we can still get them.

Weigh In – 76.9 Kgs

Woohoo, that weight’s going in the right direction.

Lately I’ve been visited by my old friend, laziness. I’d planned to do a 10 km run on Friday – my long run for the week. Well on Friday I decided to reschedule it for Saturday. Saturday I rescheduled for Sunday. Yesterday I sat around thinking up excuses for not doing it. I didn’t want to run, I wanted to curl up in front of the heater with my knitting and my coffee. It’s so hard to get motivated when the weather’s so cold.

In the end, I put on my running gear. It’s so much harder to NOT go running when you are dressed for it. Still took a lot to get me out the door but I decided I do a 5 km run around the block and then keep going. my usual around the block run and keep going. I worked out the time I needed to run based on my pace and ran for that time.

I’d like to say that running somewhere new and unexplored revitalised my running but that would be lies. When I leave my house and run my usual run, the streets are all bitumen. I didn’t realise that heading north, they are all concrete. Concrete is much harder on the legs and knees than bitumen. Curse you, City of Darebin and your need to concrete!

When I got home, I tracked it on MapMyRun (my new fave toy) and it ended up being over 11 km – go me.