andy Wrote:Can you not take up the initiative yourself and send round a mail to see if you can find some others to form a team?
Hmm, it's an interesting thought. To be perfectly honest, I'd probably have more luck forming a team of cat stranglers ... oddly enough, not too many people seem to want to run a half marathon up the side of a bloody mountain.
andy Wrote:Sorry to hear that. Can you not take up the initiative yourself and send round a mail to see if you can find some others to form a team?
(shoots arm straight up, punching light-bulb and slightly scalding knuckles) Count me in!!! When is it?
Sympathy for you on the shins; mine are very unhappy with me just now, in fact my right calf is so p*ssed off it's elected to turn to stone for a while. Andy's right of course; anything gained without pain or suffering cannot be truly appreciated or considered worthy.
Eh José?
On the subject of sending certain sections of the community to sleep, a great curtain-raiser for the CWC yesterday, the Windies earning an impressive victory against a very ordinary-looking Pakistan. We get live commentary on the 'net over here so will be tuning in to Scotland against Australia. This of course creates something of a moral delimma for most Englishmen (or at least, SP, those that give a monkey's); it's a bit like the old joke about what to do if you're faced with Posh Spice and George W Bush and you only have one bullet.
[SIZE="1"]For those that don't know, you ask for another bullet[/SIZE]
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Sweder Wrote:(shoots arm straight up, punching light-bulb and slightly scalding knuckles) Count me in!!! When is it?
18 November. You'll love it. Guaranteed. Lock it in, and I'll brew another special batch of Sweder Brew, carefully arranged to be at its peak for an apres-race drink or three.
As for cricket, well sadly the matches start at midnight local time, so i won't be catching too many of them, but I will be at work for the closing stages of the Oz-Scotland game tonight/tomorrow morning. Scotland have some good players - hope they can hang on for the full 50 overs. Mind you, the way Australia have been playing, Scotland might even be worth a small wager.
Sweder Wrote:it's a bit like the old joke about what to do if you're faced with Posh Spice and George W Bush and you only have one bullet.
You shoot Posh. Dubya requires a stake through the heart
Dear MLCM,
Dont let this stupid guy get you down. First, You by Your own Yourself is the best team that you will never join.
Once you have discover this, subsidiary, I have not doubt that you will find plenty of others great teams in order to run together.
Moreover, my intuition tells me that you already belong to the best Team man can find, only that the others members are too far away for joining you always But you, as me, knows that they will follow with big expectation every breath and step of any HM you will made .
But more, and more. I am even sure that if you talks just a little bit more about the hills that you will run in November Mr. Sweder will take the suitcase for going Down-Unter . And that could be great, because, you know, he doesnt need training. He is always ready as he runs one or two HM monthly
Ana Wrote:Dear MLCM,
Don’t let this stupid guy get you down. First, You by Your own Yourself is the best team that you will never join.
Once you have discover this, subsidiary, I have not doubt that you will find plenty of others great teams in order to run together.
Moreover, my intuition tells me that you already belong to the best Team man can find, only that the others members are too far away for joining you always… But you, as me, knows that they will follow with big expectation every breath and step of any HM you will made….
But more, and more. I am even sure that if you talks just a little bit more about the hills that you will run in November Mr. Sweder will take the suitcase for going Down-Unter . And that could be great, because, you know, he doesn’t need training. He is always ready as he runs one or two HM monthly…
Great message, Ana. You're absolutely right.
I'll run it in 2010 if it coincides with the Ashes series...
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
Mid Life Crisis Man Wrote:18 November. You'll love it. Guaranteed. Lock it in, and I'll brew another special batch of Sweder Brew, carefully arranged to be at its peak for an apres-race drink or three.
See, now that's just plain unfair.
You write Guaranteed. Lock it in, I read Guaranteed Lock in.
You have to be so careful with language these days . . .
Anyway, this is a 1000-1 shot, way longer odds than me doing the Aquilianos this year. There needs to be a coming together in the firmament, a stirring amongst the gods . . . and a modest win on the lottery. But I ain't ruling it out. At least, not yet.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Ana Wrote:Moreover, my intuition tells me that you already belong to the best Team man can find, only that the others members are too far away for joining you always… But you, as me, knows that they will follow with big expectation every breath and step of any HM you will made….
Methinks Ana you might just be our very own Amelie.
You certainly make me smile a lot
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Ana Wrote:Moreover, my intuition tells me that you already belong to the best Team man can find, only that the others members are too far away for joining you always But you, as me, knows that they will follow with big expectation every breath and step of any HM you will made .
But more, and more. I am even sure that if you talks just a little bit more about the hills that you will run in November Mr. Sweder will take the suitcase for going Down-Unter
The only really sad part about a virtual team like RC is that the pub is a bit lonely after the race...
...not that I let that stop me of course.
I think Mr.Sweder is a bit too busy jet-setting all over the rest of the bloody planet, running marathons and ultras here there and everywhere to fit in one little hill climb down here in Tasmania, despite having eight months prior notice, and the promise of his own special batch of custom-made quality Aussie stout.
But that's OK. There'll be others that will appreciate it. Oh yes.
It's 04:40 a.m. The clock radio clicks on. I click it off again, somewhat more forcibly than strictly necessary, but it has the desired effect. I've only had about three hours sleep and so somewhat more force than usual is also required to muster the determination to get up and face the day. But somehow I do. The next 40 minutes are a murky haze of routine, conducted in a semi-unconscious state, but it gets me to where I need to be... it now being 05:20 a.m. and I'm in the street, standing at the side of the road as the newspaper delivery guy screams past in his implausibly small Diahatsu van, newspapers hurtling hither and thither, knocking gnomes over here, landing in fish ponds over there.
The days are shortening rapidly now, and so it is still pitch black and very cold. To complete the misery, as I begin my journey, right on cue it begins raining. But I can't return to the warmth of the home, not because this is a gritty, necessary training run, but simply because it's my daily commute to work, where my boss takes rather a dim view of people not turning up without good reason, especially on the early shift.
Well, in fact this is a kind of a training run. I could take the car of course, which would allow an extra 40 minutes in bed, but I include this early brisk walk as part of my overall traning and the sacrifice is worth it, even if it is cold, dark and raining. Not that any of my work colleagues agree with me. In fact they're fairly unanimous in declaring me mad. I, of course, don't dispute this.
Anyhow, I set off into the dark and cold. A careful ten minute descent of the "awful dread" - a set of rough steps cut into the side of the hill on which I live, gets the knees whining and my quads burning as I have to sort of hover mid-stride in the darker parts of this poorly lit path. However the compensation is the sight of wallabies and possums that frequent this area at this time of day, I mean night. There are almost certainly echidnas, bandicoots and possibly wombats as well, but they are less brazen and I haven't spotted these as yet.
At the bottom of the hill I walk through the Hobart campus of the University of Tasmania, and my arrival today coincides with the cleaners shouting noisy farewells in the car park to each other as they leave, their nightly duties complete. This encounter has happened often enough now that we recognise each other, but we don't make eye contact and so I walk on this morning without acknowledging them - the culture of greeting is strangely different at this time of morning for some reason.
I walk past the Computing, Engineering and Law faculties before turning away from the university and walking along a quiet back street through the even quieter, affluent suburb of Sandy Bay, where half a million dollars will buy you very little but trouble, held up only by the ivy that smothers it.
Near the church a young, scared-looking boy, only about ten years old stands on the corner with a huge bag of God-knows-what. As I approach, a car pulls up and the boy silently climbs in with his bag and they drive off. Oddly, this is the third day in a row I've seen this happen. One of life's bizarre little mysteries I guess. But apart from this strange encounter, all is very peaceful in this part of town.
Soon I'm into the Sandy Bay shopping precinct, and then ten minutes further on, I'm into my old stamping ground of Battery Point. This is a very old part of Hobart, located next to the waterfront, and once upon a time, very, very working class. Now of course, its warehouses have been turned into trendy boutiques, art galleries and coffee shops. The pubs and restaurants however are its main redeeming feature. But at this hour, the tourists and latte set have been replaced by delivery trucks, fork lifts and council clean up crews getting the area ready for the day.
I walk on, reaching the waterfront, where my Dad worked back in the 60s as a marine surveyor and a shipwright. He worked for a time on the apple ships, making good money during the apple season building temporary decking into the freighters taking millions of apples to the mother country England. But then in the early '70s England joined the "Common Market" (the EEC) and virtually overnight Tasmania's apple industry was ruined. So much for loyalty to her dominions... and so the apple orchards were largely grubbed out and instead we sold berry fruits to the USA and Japan. Nowadays the apples are making a come-back, thanks in part to the Japanese Fuji variety, which sell for stupidly high prices in Asia, but here we get the perfectly acceptable "seconds" at far lower prices. Yet despite that, the waterfront is rapidly being taken over by the more lucrative tourist and yuppie set. Packing sheds have been converted into bars and restaurants and even the wheat silos have been turned into crazy-looking luxury apartments. And where once the docks were full of freighters and fishing boats, the more common sight now are massive cruise ships and the smaller tourist boats that you can hire - for around $2000 per hour.
By now the city is starting to wake up, and the streets are filling with trucks and early commuters who can at least enjoy relatively empty streets. I leave the waterfront and pass through one more historic area - an area once called Wapping, that was supposedly the worst disease-laden and crime-ridden slum in the colonies. Today little of that remains, other than a few brass plaques in the pavement telling us where ancient slums once stood. Now it mostly comprises more of the trendy, inner-city apartments so beloved of the young, lazy rich, and a towering 5 star hotel, standing where once there was little but gin parlours and diseased brothels. I love, at least, the irony of it.
Finally I arrive at work, on the site of the old railway station, and wave my pass card at the back door sensor and stop my heart rate monitor/stop watch, which I've been geeky enough to wear today, having just got it back from the repairers. 49 minutes exactly - not bad for a damp morning. Today I'm working in a room that would have stood in the vicinity of platform 2 not so many years ago, and where as a child I would often catch a train home. Sometimes it would even be a steam engine. No such romance now. I work in the government broadcasting service, and instead of diesel-electrics from 6 platforms, it's all satellite dishes, gleaming studios, and an anomolous multiple sclerosis cluster among the staff that has us employees all a little worried.
Being a government employee, my work isn't overly taxing. Most days is just a steady turnover of work, with the occasional deadly dull day or the even rarer full-on panic-station day. But today goes quietly, and I do my seven and a half hour shift in one hit, leaving a little after lunch. I forsake the obvious option of a return walk home, and instead take a short ten minute walk into town and catch the bus back, before crashing for an hour and then waking up feeling like shite. But I have a 60 minute treadmill session to do, and do it I must...
As is often the case, the sessions I dread most turn out to be the best, and this run goes well, and I finish surprisingly strong and fresh. The shin soreness of the other day has vanished completely, and my knees which have been complaining all day, stop aching after the first few minutes, so a bloody good session all up.
As we start edging into winter there is little activity on the river to keep me occupied whilst on the treadmill (which gives me a great view of the river and all its activity), so instead I did a fair bit of day-dreaming, which is kind of how this lengthy blog came about. But first I did a fair bit of thinking about ... of all things, boxing. This is mostly because I had recently watched Rocky II. Now, I'm not exactly a Sylvestor Stallone fan, but a mate of mine who for many years made a respectable living as a professional triathlete, has lauded the Rocky movies as the perfect motivation tool, and so I occasionally dip into them.
Boxing is a really odd kind of sport. I'm not the kind of person who finds any satisfaction in brutality, but boxing has always had a bit of a fascination for me. I can trace this back to the Muhammad Ali - Joe Frazier fight of 1971, which is partly paid tribute to in the the first Rocky movie. I happened to be home sick from school that day, and my father - an otherwise upright and honest man, and who showed very little interest in sport at all, surprised the heck out of me by taking the day off work to stay home and watch it. And so we watched it together, and that is a moment etched into my memory. For starters, live satellite broadcasts of sporting events were a rarity way back then, so the broadcast of itself was interesting enough. But it was the guts of both fighters over 15 rounds, and seeing also my Dad gripped by the spectacle that stays with me.
To my mind, boxing - and I think the Rocky movies capture this very well - is not really about beating the opponent. It is much more about stamina and determination; about driving one's self to deliver your best. And it is demonstrated in such a brutally simple way. It was this kind of grit that appealed to my Dad, a quality he admired but seldom saw in other sports. And I find it the same. More importantly, there's a connection with running that I find fascinating, and it's perhaps no coincidence that boxers place such importance on the role of running in their training. Whether you're in the ring with another boxer, or on the road slugging out the miles, the real opponent is still yourself, and the goal is not to beat your opponent to a pulp, but simply to endure.
Anyway, enough philosophising. The Rocky movies are wonderfully motivating, and worth watching if only for the training scenes. And notice too that Rocky never gets serious about his training until he has a definite goal in mind - that's when he makes the decision to be the best he can be, and that's when he becomes the champion.
Cool.
Well after all that, it is my duty to report that rather than a triumph of running the roads of Tasmania, instead a weekend of sloth and decadence begins tomorrow, as I take an old friend on a tour of Tasmania's finest wineries, pubs and restaurants. The only distances covered will be to the bar and back I fear!
It may be a bit ugly. If I survive, I shall report back on Monday.
It's one of those inexplicable things,that the minutiae of other people's lives tell us more than the big stuff. I suppose because it adds colour and texture, and turns people into real 3D entities. Strangely fascinating.
Not too many possums and wallabies around these parts, and I don't think I'd know an echidna or bandicoot if I tripped over one. I get deer and rabbits aplenty, plus the occasional fox and the very occasional hare. And I saw some glow-worms once. Latest wildlife is the mass of little black dots in my pond -- the tadpoles are on their way. This time I'm committed to giving them better protection from the murderous magpies.
But anyway, yes, good stuff. I'm envious of your task -- escorting a pal around "Tasmania's finest wineries, pubs and restaurants". I'm sure there are more pleasant-sounding pastimes available to man, but I can't bring one to mind just at the moment. It evokes the spirit of Sideways. I presume you've seen it? Do catch it. You'll enjoy it.
I'll confess, I've never seen a Rocky film. I will rectify this in my next DVD order. Don't forget to give Dead Man's Shoes (if you can get it) and A History of Violence a go when you get the chance. Though I know that violence and crime isn't your thing. Mind you, after a good stagger round the Derwent Valley, that could change.....
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
The first Rocky film was a remarkable piece of work, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture against such giants as All The Presidents Men, Network and the outstanding Taxi Driver. The film's maximum pathos blended with a brutal dedication to rise above life’s limitations makes Stallone’s seminal piece work for me.
I wouldn’t give you tuppence for the sequels (though I’ve seen most of them), but Peter Wolmarans’ theme, Gonna Fly Now, still gives me chills. When I first started running I used to head off down the three-quarter mile drop past Lewes Prison and hit the cycle path along the A27. On the return I had that bastard hill to climb, so I cut a CD with that piece of music due to come in at roughly the point where I’d reach the base of the hill. Man, by the time I’d pounded up that street with the crescendo washing through my headphones stone me if I didn’t feel like a World Champion.
It’s corny as hell, but it worked for me.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Sweder Wrote:It’s corny as hell, but it worked for me.
Thanks for the additional Rocky affirmation. I'll do it.
My version of "corny as hell, but it works for me" is the London Marathon theme tune.
I used to have it on my iPod, and when it popped up in shuffle mode, well...
As a piece of music, detached from the event, it's probably not just corny but "dreary as hell".
But I can't hear it without thinking of all those thousands of people and all their stories. I can't hear it without thinking of how I felt when I did the race in 2002, and especially how I felt when I was plodding through that final mile or two.
If I can find it, I'll post a link to it.
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
It's like having a vindaloo curry while sober. It just aint right. Away from the televised event, away from one's own sense of magnificent sacrifice, I'm not sure that the music works too well. But if you've ever watched or run London, it will always thump you in the back.
Anyway, you can listen to it temporarily by clicking here:
It's not quite up there with Vangelis's Chariots of Fire mate. What's slightly alarming is I've run the thing three times and can't remember hearing this once
But that doesn't matter a jot; it's what it means to you that counts. Most people tap their foot jauntily to Ricky Don't Lose That Number by Steeley Dan, whereas I drift away to another dimension, to return at the end of the song with a tear in my eye and a ravaged soul. Such is the power of music. :o
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph
Sweder Wrote:It's not quite up there with Vangelis's Chariots of Fire mate. What's slightly alarming is I've run the thing three times and can't remember hearing this once
You've never heard the FLM tune? Gulp.
Perhaps you have to be a TV watcher. It appears a lot there, and in all the previews.
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
Just to prove there is life without running, my mate and I had a really decadent weekend of wine, beer, single malts, glorious food and absolutely no running at all. And to prove I didn't overdo things, I ran a cruisy 30 minutes this morning, and for the first time in this training program was even reluctant to stop running at the end of my allotted time.
I could give you all the gory details of the weekend, but you'd just be jealous. But in summary, we did the wineries, discovering one or two outstanding gems, honoured St. Patrick appropriately, drank some superb wine ('93 Penfolds Grange being the highlight) with equally superb food, and even unearthed a couple of single malt gems, viz the nicely-priced Ardbeg 10 y.o. and the superlative Bruichladdic 15 y.o. Mmmm.
Sorry Ana, but I didn't see a single sign of any tea all weekend!
However, today it's back to the reality of salads, protein drinks and the treadmill...
March maundering.
![[Image: rocky-arms-l-poster.jpg]](http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/rocky-arms-l-poster.jpg)
But in summary, we did the wineries, discovering one or two outstanding gems, honoured St. Patrick appropriately, drank some superb wine ('93 Penfolds Grange being the highlight) with equally superb food, and even unearthed a couple of single malt gems,