The pet picture roll

Introducing Grace...

And Caspar...

And both together last night, a lot more grown up and relaxing on my lap in front of the TV.

Here's Caspar giving me the finger lol

Finally, here are Bazil the Pug and Kali the German Shepherd, who live at Mum's place.

Quick update

I've been AWOL for a while, but all is well. I've just been uber-busy at work. When you work in a small office and someone is on extended sick leave... well, life gets hard. But I love the work, so I'm not complaining TOO much. A little less volume would be nice, but on the whole life is good.

In the non-working world, all has been going pretty well too. My running is coming along, although I am struggling a bit. Every run seems tough at the moment, so I think I've lost my rhythm a bit. I just need to keep plugging away at it and find my happy place again. Stats since I last checked in:

Saturday - 50 mins, 7.6km, avg pace 9.1km/hour. A fairly hilly course and I was smashed by the end of it. Long run day increases to an hour this Saturday, so I'm hoping it feels better.

Monday - speed work. 30 seconds @ 15km/hour, 1 minute standing recovery, 10 repeats. Speed work gets me every time, 30 seconds sounds like nothing but by the time I'm half way through the repeats I'm wondering if I might need to spew. Not good in any situation, but especially not in the gym. I survived with no such incidents though, thankfully.

Thursday - 30 mins, 4.6km, avg pace 9.4km/hour. My legs were a bit tight and fatigued from some strength work earlier in the week, and the last km of this run was torturous. Having said that, the first km was the slowest - it is all uphill, but only gradual inclines. I probably needed more of a warm up this morning, given the sore legs and cool atmosphere.

Outside of the running, I've bitten the bullet and joined the good gym. I've messed around with some cheaper ones in the last year or so, but it just doesn't work for me. The class timetables suck and the equipment isn't well maintained - there's a reason they're cheap. So I've joined at Goodlife, goodbye $910, but I did get away with no joining fee, no admin fee and a bonus month free. Still not cheap, but on the whole I don't think I did too badly. The gym has just been renovated, all the equipment is new and the group fitness timetable is pretty extensive. I've been for my initial trainer session and got a strength program written for me. They update these for you free of charge every 3 months. I'll give it a go, but I can't see myself sticking to it - there's stuff in there that I just know I won't do. For example, I HATE wall sits. Like, really hate them. I told her that, but she put them in anyway. They might be good for you, but I'm certain there are other exercises she could have substituted, given my views on this. I'll just change it around myself.

Casie - yes I do have some pics of the kittens, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I'll try to get to it on the weekend, I normally update my blog at work :)

Today's Run

4.1km, 26:39, 9.2km/hour

This was the same route I did on Monday. The first km, which trends slightly downhill, was really really hard. I was at 6:35 pace for the first km - I've been known to do that stretch in 5:55 (although admittedly when I knew I was taking the downhill route at the end of the road, not the massive uphill in the opposite direction as I was today, so I was deliberately holding some in reserve). I was quite scared of how I was going to cope with the big hills given the poor start, but I found my rhythm and got through pretty well. 6:45 and 6:38 for the next 2 km, which had some nasty nasty hills in them. The 4th km I did in 6:07, but that's down some very nice hills. What goes up, must come down!

There's a long road ahead to get my running fitness back, but as they say, the longest journey starts with a single step. That's enough philosophy for today, I've got a busy work day ahead. Happy running one and all.

Been sick

Hi all, I've been absent again for a while... I've been sick :-( Not at-deaths-door sick, but nasty virus sick which put me off course for a week or 2. Last weekend I thought I might be dying. I'm slightly melodramatic when it comes to illness though. I'm very rarely sick, and I don't cope well when something gets me. Bossman told me last week that I should have been a bloke, the way I whinge about being sick lol.

Anyway, I am definitely through the worst of the sickness. I still have a lingering cough which is annoying and wakes me up a couple of times a night, but other than that, I'm pretty much over it. So it's back to normal programming - I went for my first run in a couple of weeks this morning. The Garmin battery died on the home stretch so I don't have the full stats (which is bloody annoying, but might encourage me to check my equipment the night before). The run wasn't easy by any means, but it wasn't as tough as I was expecting, so hopefully I haven't lost as much fitness as I thought I might have. I was running pretty slow, but it was also a very hilly route, so I was very happy just to make the distance and not have to slow to a walk on the massive hill in the middle. The nice downhill for the last km or so was lovely :)

Outside of the sickness and today's run, life has been pretty quiet. Lots going on at work, but mostly positive (which is nice after the year we've had!) The kittens are settling into the household very nicely, and we're building a pretty good routine for ourselves. I still need to be a bit more organised so that I can fit everything into life. I always make work my first priority, so that's not likely to suffer (bad priorities, I know). But I don't want my training to suffer, and nor do I want to leave the cats with not enough attention. Eternally seeking balance in life, that's me. I'm going to try to get to the gym tonight, although I don't think there's any good classes on. I might do a strength session and see how I pull up.

Until later...

Yay, and grr

First of all, yay. I won the give away on Jess' blog last week. And yesterday I rocked into work in the middle of the day after a couple of painful meetings with idiots, and what should await me but this:

How freakin' exciting is that! This little stash is going to hold me in good stead over the next 13 weeks of HM training. Jess also addressed the envelope to Megan (aka Whatalegend), which gave me and the new receptionist quite a little giggle too.

Secondly, another yay. Thank you Kylie for pointing me in the direction of Google Chrome for blogger. I have been cracking it at blogger using IE for a good while now, and Chrome seems to be working great.

And now, grr. I went out for my run this morning, which was 1km intervals with 30 second walks between km (well according to the program it's supposed to be 5 x 5 minutes running with 30 second recovery walk, but given it's pitch black and I can't see my Garmin, it's easier to just do 4 x 1km). I started out brilliantly and ran the fastest km I've done in some time... 5:47. It helps that it trends downhill and it was freezing so I was trying to warm up, but nevertheless, 5:47 it was. Anyway, I digress. I then did my 30 second walk, then hit what I thought was the lap button on the Garmin to start my next run interval... but it was the pause button. Damn it. I thought the km seemed to be going for a while, peered at the watch in the dark to see where I was up to, and found out I wasn't going anywhere at all. I had a 30 second walk, then pressed the right button for the next km (6:14 on a gentle incline, not too bad). Then for the last km, coming up the bigger hills... I pressed the damn pause button instead of lap AGAIN. I have no idea what time I did on km 2 and 4, which is bloody annoying. Km 2 felt good, km 4 felt hard - but then it was uphill, and I had gone out pretty hard.

Despite my technological deficiencies, I'm happy to have another run under the belt. Kylie, we might need to keep up this text messaging at 6am for my whole training calendar, I was really not keen on getting out of bed this morning, and you made all the difference!

On the non-running front, what else is going on? I went to the gym and did a step class for the first time in months on Tuesday. I love step. My calves are certainly feeling it now though (although interestingly they didn't bother me while I was running). I'm planning on doing pump tonight, although I might bail and go shopping for the kittens instead, they're coming home in 2 days :) Work is still rolling along. I have lots to do and very little motivation, which is not a good combination. But I'm working on it. And last but not least, tomorrow night I'm going to see Harry Potter 8. Can't freaking wait, I'm such a Harry Potter geek.

Until next time...

Blogger is driving me crazy...

I can only post comments on about 2 blogs at the moment, grrrr.

Casie: Congrats on the marathon finish Casie - 4:50 is fantastic, you should be so proud of yourself. And the quick recovery is awesome too :)

Do the half in Melbourne... you might have to wait half an hour for me to finish, but it would be awesome. Or I guess I could wait and watch you finish the full marathon, either way!


Kylie: Thank God for our pact this morning, there was no way I was getting out of that toasty warm bed if it wasn't for the anticipation of a text message coming my way. It was nice to be up and at 'em early, even if it was fffffreeeeezing.

Mel: I haven't been able to post on your blog for a while. I hope this weekend was a brief abberation and you're feeling better soon. Your training has been sounding fantastic and I'm sure you'll kill the 70.3

Jess: I'm not ignoring your blog, but you've probably had enough of my opinions on the stuff with the tri-boys via iPhone. Still thinking of you though :)

Back into it

I have been slack again, I know. I apologise. But I'm back now, so that counts for something right?

I've been busy, but not so busy that I couldn't update my blog if I'm completely honest. I've been more busy procrastinating than actually doing stuff really. I've always had a propensity to procrastinate, and sometimes it's more prevalent than others. I've been through a bad patch with it, hopefully I'm back to normal programming.

On the training front, like every other front, I have been procrastinating. I've had a gap in my running, with a few half-arsed efforts along the way, so I know it's going to hurt to get my fitness back. Plus it's freezing and pitch black in the mornings, so all of this has been combining to give me a whole range of excuses not to get out there. Well it's now 13 weeks until the Melbourne half marathon which I have arranged to run with the lovely Jess at http://www.tri-thatshowiroll.com/.

13 weeks is not a long time when you've let your fitness go to hell. With no time to waste, I made a pact with Kylie at http://kyliescuriosities.blogspot.com/ that we would both get up early and start our exercise plans this morning. I did it (and so did Kylie!), and I ran a nice brisk 4km at an average pace of 6:18. I started out fast and tailed off - for two reasons. One I just went out too fast, and two it's uphill on the way back! But that's a decent pace, and I'm happy with that as a starting point. I've got the same run programmed for Wednesday or Thursday morning, and a 40 minute run set for Saturday. I'll update you with my progress, I promise!

In other news, I'm trying out a new gym at the moment, and so far I quite like it. It's pretty big and has lots of classes, but none of the classes have been crowded at all thus far. The people seem nice and it's not full of posers and beautiful people (also a plus in my book). The downside is that I think it will be more expensive than I'm prepared to pay when my intro month is over, but we'll see what happens.

I am also preparing to welcome two new additions to my household. Caspar and Grace the British shorthair kittens will be joining me in a couple of weeks. It will be nice to have some company in the house, and a reason to leave the office, given I have a massive tendency to spend way too much time at work. I spent some time on the weekend clearing out some cupboard space and buying new cat related items - food and toys and the like. As this is as close to having children as I'm ever going to come, I guess this is my version of nesting. Can't wait for them to arrive though, I'm even taking a day off work to pick them up and get them settled in at home.

OK that's it for now. I'll be blog-stalking in your neighbourhood sometime soon :)