GPS Photos

I have been doing all the silly stuff wearing a GPS watch that tracks me running, walking, riding, etc and I now have maps of the 15 hours and 50 minutes of competition I have undertaken over the last 5 weeks covering 290km. First up was the Sydney Marathon which at least finishes somewhere different from where it starts.

After a quiet few weeks I was ready for the Melbourne Marathon which is less all over town and more out and back.

Finally there was the around the bay and hopefully the below map shows you that I made it round as the only other photo I have is of me asleep on the couch afterwards.

Around the bay in 7 hours 30 minutes

Yesterday was the last in my trilogy of stupid events, a 210km bike ride from Glen Huntly to Glen Huntly around Port Philip Bay. It started well when the phone I was using to wake me up (borrowed from work) hadn't been updated for daylight savings. Fortunately Eleri's backup alarm woke me up at 4:45 and so I was able to get away at 5:30 after a quick breakfast and lots of grumbling.

The ride into town was great and the road was clear until we got near to Port Melbourne where I joined a swarm of other riders and we slowly headed up to the bridge. From there it was a nice little ride down to Queenscliff and onto the ferry (eventually) during which time I learnt a little about cycling etiquette and indicating. The 3 things I learnt on the ride were:

• Stopping/slowing - shouted and sometimes accompanied with a hand up showing that the group is stopping
• Finger pointing at ground - look at that lovely bit of ripped up tyre on the ground
• Finger pointed around back/to side - I'm moving out, wanting to move out, please don't crash into me

Once I'd mastered the requisite skills for riding in a group and combined them with keeping my eyes open and spotting a few obvious things before the pack got twitchy then I moved up from the back to second/third in the group and led a few times. It was very interesting and fortunately the groups were travelling at a speed that I could keep up with.

After the ferry ride I started up again and it very soon started to rain a bit which made the white lines nice and skiddy. I pottered on along the coast and up the hill and along the coast and along the coast and made it home in 7 hours and 30 minutes (ride time) and 9 hours 15 minutes (elapsed time). I stopped twice, once for the ferry and once at Mordialloc and am even thinking about riding to work tomorrow if I can sit down by then ;-)

Melbourne Marathon

So Sunday was my second marathon of the year and the cheer squad consisted of Eleri, Jocelyne, David, Leigh, Brett, Blue and Spongebob this time. They all did a fantastic job out on the course and kept me topped up with gels and powerade. Here is the first cheer stop, it was quite hard to spot them as usual.

I was a bit better on the pace this time and was plugging away at 5 minutes 30 second per kilometre up until about 30km where we turned around and headed back to the city. Then the wind and the heat started to wear away at me and I got slower and had to stop for rests at drinks stations. Here I am a bit earlier looking lively.

As I headed for home the last 8km were very hard and I saw a lady runner collapse in front of me and later I heard a lot of runners had suffered in the heat (hit a top of 30 degrees). Fortunately there were lots of St John's Ambulance around and spectators with water so the lady and a few others I saw on the side of the road were being helped immediately. I bumped into Warren from AU just where the lady collapsed as well and we kept overtaking each other towards the MCG as we took it in turns to run and walk. I finally made it onto the hallowed turf and got high 5s from every volunteer on the way round. It is a fantastic finish to the event and long may it remain.

Thanks to all the supporters who came to the g and cheered people on, the marathon was really well supported this year and it makes a huge difference. Thanks especially to Eleri who puts up with all my angst, quietly supports me and is generally amazing, I couldn't do it without her.

Finally, her I am with medal, blue and having cleaned most of the gunk off my face from energy gels. I made it round in 4:09:51 which I was fairly happy with after the wind and heat had taken their toll.

Marathon prep

In preperation for the Melbourne marathon the young Stephens took a day trip to the garden cenrtre to get some vegie seedlings. Whilst navigating, Eleri spotted a mini golf course on the map and so after lunch we took on the hardest course they could offer us! As you can see, it took big balls to get on this course.

At the final hole Eleri finally gives David the tip he needs to start winning, hit it at the hole.

Earlier on in the game Jocelyne showed us how to get the most out of your money by hitting as many shots as possible per hole. Eleri is practising her yoga in the background.

After a hard time on the course we took our purchases from the garden centre home and planted them. Here is the first batch of plantings at chez Stephens, hopefully the first of many successful seasons!

Let's all go running

So this Sunday I am going to run my second marathon of the year and it's getting to the point where I start thinking about it too much and not sleeping. I was running through the course with Leigh and Chris in the office when  I remembered the pain from Sydney. This weekend will be a concentration of pace running to try and start on 5 minute 30 second kilometres and stay on it for as long as possible. If I can manage to hold onto that pace then I should be home in under 4 hours and can then collapse on the hallowed turf of the MCG! Fingers crossed for a good race and some more man in tights photos on the way, GO TEAM!

man in tights

After a week of hobbling I am now fully functioning and will be going for a training run tomorrow to start getting ready for the Melbourne marathon. This week has been fairly interesting as I have a 30 minute walk from the train station to the office which took 45 minutes on monday and has slowly come back down to 30 minutes during the week. Anyway, here are the long awaited, most anticipated photographs of a man in tights doing stupid amounts of running. Here blue and I are having a pre run conference:

Jen then decided to show us her best cow impression to go with the new member of the team, cow bell.

With my trusty team in place I went and joined the other runers and the cheer squad went up to the start. Blue managed to push his way right to the front using his friendly personality and big arms.

So now the race was on, it took a couple of minutes to get away after the gun and then it was all free running. I stuck with the 4 hour pace runners for about 10km and then pulled away from them a bit as I felt strong at about half way. Here I even had the strength to raise my arm.

Unfortunately all my early enthusiasm took it out of me and here you can see a slightly sadder boy. No kidding, that was about the size of my stride by then and soon after the spasm in my calf added to the fun so that I had to stretch it out every couple of kilometres.

I struggled on through though and after 4 hours 8 minutes and 38 seconds I was home and enjoying the gorgeous Sydney weather. Thanks for all your support and text messages on the day, I'm looking forward to the Melbourne marathon now as it is a flatter course and hopefully I've learnt to pace myself a bit better!

milking it

To try and keep you interested until I manage to get the photos from Eleri's camera onto the internet here is a video of me crossing the line. I'm the one in a red t-shirt at the end ;-)  http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/Default.aspx?id=5857

Official Photos and times

For all of you that want to see a man in pain go to:

http://www5.marathon-photos.com/scripts/event_entry.py?job=Sports/2008%20Sports/Sydney%20Marathon&match=5857

The official times are up on the web as well at:

http://res.championchipaustralia.com/View.asp?id=1235&athID=5857

Apparently there is an official video of me crossing the line as well which should be available tomorrow and I'll chuck the photos from Eleri online tonight.

Tagtastic

We have been tagged, apparently our fence and gate now belongs to kwelf, kweit, etc. I am suffering strongly from NIMBY where I can appreciate good graffiti on someone elses property but am furious by rubbish tags on our fence and gate. When we were in Sydney we were out and about and there was a graffiti wall with lots of people out in the day doing art on the side of a warehouse. I'm guessing they had asked permission and had thought about what they were doing. If you go to Glen Huntly at the moment you can see some retard has bought a can of silver spray paint and taged such imaginative things as rubbish bins, pavement and our property. For those of you who know something about graffiti, is this any good?

Ed says NO! Have reported it to the Police and sent them some photos for their tag album, now to bunnings for some cleaning stuff.