Oktoberfest

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

To be honest, the treadmill has been a bit boring lately. Convoluted explanation follows: This sad situation came about because a technician at work inadvertently deafened me a little while back - I was blasted with 1 kHz tone at above safe levels, resulting in some temporary hearing loss and tinnitus. This has meant that of late I've been unable to use my trusty mp3 player. And that in turn means that I have nothing to listen to whilst on the tready millstone. To play a CD or have the radio on at levels that can be heard above the noise of the treadmill annoys and irritates the neighbours*. And so the treadmill has become a little less enjoyable of late.

So there was nothing for it but to take to the hills again, literally. I therefore spent a rugged 4 hours today on the Tasman peninsula, a picturesque part of the island, full of quad-busting undulations and the odd reasonable hill. The pictures tell the story better I think:

#1 The first half of the track is a gentle hill climb through pleasant eucalypt forest.

#2 The second half however, consists of coastal up-and-down, alongside towering ocean-side cliffs up to 300m high. Challenging.

#3 One of the steeper climbs

#4 Me, buggered, and it's only the half-way point.

It was a good excursion with much better weather than last time, and I am again reasonably well pleased with my strength and endurance, and especially heart rate recovery times. I'm not fast - maybe never will be - but I'm one heck of a lot fitter than I was a few weeks ago.

Of course the scenery was so much better than on the treadmill, but gosh it was a long way to the beer fridge!

MLCM.


* Other good ways to annoy and irritate your neighbours include parking in their driveway, tossing your garbage over their fence and setting fire to their cat.