rage against age

The school year in the Northern Territory begins tomorrow and I suspect the successful completion of janathon challenge will come under attack. Over the past few weeks I have become more familiar with the Casuarina Reserve which is almost my front yard. Today for the very first time I visited Buffalo Creek as a detour on my bike ride. It is a popular fishing spot but unfortunately rain leads to contamination of the creek from overflow from the nearby sewerage ponds. What were the planners thinking?

On the way home I noticed the creek, about 200m from my front door was running out vigorously and had a lot more water in it than normal due to the monsoonal fronts that have been visiting us over the past month.

Normally the water is still at low tide and tends to run in and out sedately for the most part. This was a definite rush and may lead to minor flooding if the rains continue.

I am sure how effective my food choices are but I am maintaining the diary and will evaluate after a couple of weeks.

Tonight I had a dragon fruit for dessert. The dragon fruit not only has a magnificent name, it looks wonderful and, with lime juice drizzled over it, tastes wonderful as well.

Main stats: 35.7k running; 85.45k on bike, only 4.4k swimming. Calories used should result is 1.3k weight loss. Not quite!

A blur of water was what met me outside my front door this afternoon but because it was low tide, because the temperatures were relatively mild and because I really wanted to revisit the mangrove boardwalk in the Casuarina Reserve that I ran through the previous week even though it meant over 50mins to get there, a run was beckoning.

Mangrove roots are fascinating visually and I took my iphone to try and capture the mystique of this vegetation.

The images I took did not really reflect the ideas I had about the mangroves but some accidental shots in hipstamatic came closer as they reflected the otherworldliness of the environment more.

My final pic, a fish eye view compresses many of the unique elements of the habitat: colour, shape, and the contortion of the roots.

This exercise makes me reflect that sometimes it is more than the exercise that makes a run worthwhile.

A rain soaked day has brought out the sand flies which have attacked my legs and made me feel very miserable. In addition my inflamed achilles has worsened leaving me cross and frustrated. And on top of that my desire to lose weight has lead to me obsessing about food.

But enough whinging. It is three weeks into Janathon and I am still on top of it. A run and a ride today although I am still to do the strength training set. I am so bad at it. Not only do I do on the knees push ups, there are some crunches I cannot manage… sigh! Oops I am whinging again – time to just get into it.

Today it was the first day of the month that it did not rain. It was pleasant to feel the sun on my back as I swam in the unshaded areas of  pool. It was also good to get the rapidly piling up laundry done.

It was also an opportunity to mow the lawns which had grown several inches very quickly over the past three weeks. More than an hour and half later of pushing a mower through a welter of wet vegetation I was exhausted and wondering how I earth I thought myself fit.

Yet I know I am fit. The Janathon challenge has helped me to be consistent in doing something everyday and has also made me realise that I have to consider diet in my approach.

Tonight I cooked a first meal in my new wok. It was a stir fry of chicken marinated in soya, ginger & garlic sauce, and fish sauce. Accompanying vegetables included red onion, spinach, red capsicum, mushrooms and celery. The result leaves me with the intent to use the wok more often.

I had a great run this morning on a trail through the vine forest at East Point Reserve. Although my achilles is a little inflamed the soft ground assisted and it was a good feeling to pace myself through the meandering pathway through a corridor made up of a variety of tree species.

Several times I disturbed a wallaby which crashed away through the vegetation on my approach, but what I didn’t know, and was told later, was I also had an excellent chance of distubing a snake or two. Thank goodness I did not see any.

Later on in the morning I took an RPM class which I love taking because they keep me honest. It is very difficult to bludge when everyone else is spinning their heart out.

At the moment I feel really fit but I do need to make a better effort at shedding some pounds so I have decided to keep a food diary. That sounds so depressing but hopefully it will work.

After falling into the trap of consuming too much calorie boosting comfort food last week, I created a healthy meal which was equally comforting tonight.

It comprised sweet potato, spinach and feta cheese mash, with avocado slices and red capsicum strips, and served with baked fish marinated in lime and black pepper. It tasted wonderful and the fresh pineapple and yogurt proved the perfect finisher.

I am unsure that I used enough calories during my swim this morning but there is always the run tomorrow.

An on-coming squall over Rapid Creek

This morning I was tricked by two hours of a persistent sun trying to overcome its cloud oppressors and took the dogs for a walk down to the beach.

Once there I was confronted by the sight of some fairly ominous storm clouds in front of me, and the plaintive croaking of three white, and one black red-tailed, cockatoos huddling in the branches of the tree behind me. I think they were trying to warn me – but too late! The wind raised its intensity from 10 to 100, horizontal droplets of rain pricked my skin and clothing, and then I was absolutely sodden and cold.

After that I was tempted to call my soggy rush home my janathon effort for the day but my conscience was too insistent (and the rain went away again) so I went on a long and enjoyable coastal ride.

My program called for 15 sprints in a high gear with full recovery but I could not remember if it was for 10 seconds or 30. I settled on 20 sec (it was 10) and did a number of my 20 sec impressions of a cyclist in the Tour Down Under currently taking place in Adelaide. Fortunately hardly anyone was around to think me a git and I enjoyed every minute apart from the frantic gasping in the last 5 secs or so of each effort. I have read these bike sprints really help your running. I can only hope.

This morning I ran a long run in the rain on the beach. It was one of those runs which was slow and steady and easy to lose yourself in your own thoughts, particularly as there was no one else around. My intention was to run 30mins along the beach then turn around.

As it turned out I got lost in my thoughts about how I was going to engage my senior students with the poems we would be studying this year. A quick glance at my watch showed me that I had run over time and was quite comfortably plodding along. I had to say plod as while I was not walking I was not going very fast.

This took my mind to a blog I read yesterday where the blogger said she hated being called a jogger and initially I thought I agreed. However on further thought, and further minutes on the outward route, I decided running comes in many forms. Today I was a plodder, in the last 10 miles of my first marathon I was a shuffler (my achilles would not let me walk), and both are forms of running in my experience. This lead me to think about jogging and why it seems slightly insulting to be called a jogger. Maybe because it too is a form of running so as a runner you run, jog, plod, or shuffle. We say so and so jogged down the street and that sounds ok; think of the elite runner who jogs a warm up prior to beginning his or her event at race place. It indicates a freshness and lightness of the legs; a feeling I have not felt for a long time so I would love to be able to jog. However at the end of the day I DO want to be called a runner rather than a jogger as that seems more legitimate even if that running resembles a shuffle at times and I dearly wish I could jog.

All that thinking took me 54mins over my one hour run – slow but comfortable and more miles in the legs so one day they will be strong enough for me to feel the ‘lightness of jogging’.