Finally hit a 40 minute 10K

This morning’s race I was a bit off with my stomach churning pretty badly in the last couple of kms, so a 40:40 was about as good as I could expect.

• March – North Head – 42:21
• April – Lane Cove – 41:57
• May – Olympic Park – 40:08
• June – Lane Cover – 40:40

So I guess my goal is to hit a sub-40min 10km by the end of the year.

Also I trained with some work training group for the SMH Half Marathon in May. My previous PB for this race last year was 95:15. This year I aimed for 92 minutes and I ended up nailing it in 91:44, so I was super-happy to knock off that much time off my PB. So now I’m going to raise the bar and aim for a sub-90 in the Blackmore’s Sydney Running Festival half marathon in September. Apparently its a flatter course, so fingers crossed!

The City2Surf and the Bay Run are both coming up pretty damn soon so I’ve got some busy times ahead.

Breakfast

• cornflakes with maple syrup

Morning tea

• large latte
• berry muesli bar

Lunch

• Egg, mayo and cucumber sandwich
• packet of honey soy chicken chips
• diet coke

Afternoon tea

• white tea with one sugar
• a couple of wholemeal crackers
• banana

Pre-dinner/post-run

• 200ml powerade

Dinner

• fried rice with chicken, lup chong, pumpkin, carrot, peas and egg
• 1 Coopers Pale Ale

Bedtime

• A cup of sleepytime tea

Breakfast

• Two fried eggs on toast
• watered down fruit juice

Morning tea

• white tea with one sugar
• two chocolate crackles

Lunch

• Chicken teriyaki
• can of diet coke

Afternoon tea

• water
• white tea with one sugar
• one chocolate biscuit
• one banana

Dinner

• lamb chops with peas, asparagas, pumpkin and rice
• fruit cordial with sparkling mineral water

Dessert

• 3 chocolates
• yoghurt

Bedtime

• glass of milk

• porridge with banana

Morning:

• latte with one sugar

Morning tea:

• white tea with one sugar
• chocolate chip muesli bar

Lunch:

• Ham sandwich with tomato, cucumber and carrot
• lime and black pepper chips

Afternoon tea

• Pear
• diet coke

Pre-dinner snack

• slice of tasty cheddar cheese
• Coopers Pale Ale

Dinner

• Beef lasagna
• Choc-caramel tart

Bedtime

• cup of milk

Today I finally got a new license (its 5 years old). It’ll be nice to pull it out and not have to worry about people questioning me as to whether I’m me. The new one is the bottom one btw

xset s off
xset -dpms


Then it won’t blank anymore. Oh and you’ll want to somehow have those commands execute each time your window manager starts up.

Anyhow, I finally found the one command to stop it; xset -dpms.

I love the fresh produce you guys sell. I reckon its worth the premium that it might cost me elsewhere for your fresh fruit and veg. But could you perhaps get your staff to be a little friendlier or perhaps even smile once in a while? I’m not asking them to act like they’re my BFFs, but you know, just enough to lighten the mood up or something?

KTHXBYE.


SEE ALSO
rhythmbox-client(1).


Aaah, how handy So issuing a rhythmbox-client --print-playing gives me this (the last line of the screenshot):

rhythmbox-client can also handly play/pause, stop, next, previous, skip, add songs to the queue and other stuff to rhythmbox, all from the command line. In my .conkyrc I put the following line to give the “Now Playing” output:

${color #5b6dad}Now Playing: ${color}${exec /usr/bin/rhythmbox-client --print-playing}

Here’s my current desktop at work. I’m running fluxbox 1.0rc2 (guess I should upgrade it to 1.0 sometime huh?), mrxvt with full transparency with window decorations turned off. All the stats and info on the left is conky. Love it.

I guess one of my goals for the new year is to perhaps blog a bit more (yeah, we all say that don’t we huh?) If you’re curious what’s travelling through my brain, you can always check out my del.icio.us bookmarks.

If you’re moderately serious about your coffee in Sydney then you’ve probably already heard all the good things about Toby’s Estate Coffee (if not, then where have you been? ).So this was the first time I’d managed to get there for a coffee and boy did they deliver. A perfectly brewed, delicious picolo latte. Hmmm. Seeing as they’re a bit closer than the fab Campos Coffee up in Newtown, I think Campos has a new contender for favourite coffee in town (although I didn’t see any affogato on the menu at Toby’s Estate). Or perhaps there’s just a good excuse to drink more coffee on the weekends…

Pre-race jitters didn’t help me much and I couldn’t get to sleep until about 1am or so (after going to bed around 11pm, that totally sucks) and I’m just not really a morning person. Morning runs suck. So I ended up finishing the race in 62:35, which is still 2 minutes 30 seconds faster than last year, but I really had my heart set on a sub-60 minute run. Oh well, something to work towards for next year when my legs are working better and I can put the time and effort into a proper training plan (I never really got into a training plan at all, even though I had one setout for myself). I guess it was kind of cool having my result on the first page of results. I placed around 1268 I think out about 64000.

Rozie’s uploaded a whole bunch of photos over at flickr, so you can laugh at me in my silly running tights.

Also, since I haven’t really got my mileage up, I decided that I’m not going to bother doing the Sydney Running Festival half marathon, since I won’t have the time to put the training in to put in a decent time. But, instead, Rozie and I are going to be in Toronto in October and that does give me enough time to train, so I’m probably going to enter the Toronto Half Marathon instead. I’ll see a bit closer to the date how my form is going before I put my entry form. If I’m feeling a bit sucky in my training, I’ll enter the 10km Oasis Zoo Run instead, which goes around the Toronto Zoo. Sounds like fun!

Back two and a half months ago, I started a half marathon training routine from Runners’ World Magazine. It consisted for 3 training runs a week. Intervals, tempo and distance runs. Admittedly I was getting pretty sick of all the training leading up to last week and I just wanted to get the race over and done with. By Saturday night I was pretty excited. Got to bed by about 12 and had really patchy sleep until I woke up at about 5am.

Rozie, being the wonderful wife that she is came down to Hickson Rd for the 7.30am start with me. We ended up catching a taxi down since the buses didn’t start until about 6.45am (that’s when I wanted to get there). On the way down, the taxi driver told her that I was a fantastic husband because I opened the door of the taxi and let her in first. Rozie just laughed and said she was fantastic for getting up so early for me. I guess we’re both fantastic (or something…)

Away, we managed to get down there at about 6.45am or so which gave me plenty of time to warm up, pee, and find a place for the start. Compared to the City 2 Surf and perhaps even the Sydney Running Festival, the crowd seemed a lot more serious. I got the impression that regardless of peoples’ abilities as runners, that they were mostly people who ran pretty regularly, as opposed to the fun runners who might only do it a before a race like this.

Anyway, I digress. The first 5 and 10kms of the race was fantastic for me. I managed to knock over the first 10kms in about 42mins(!). Looking back I probably went a bit hard since the second half (well 11.1kms to be exact) took me about 53 minutes to complete. The main reason for this though is that for about the last 5 to 6kms I had a really painful blister coming through, which really slowed me down. I think if I didn’t have that blister that I could’ve saved myself about 3 minutes in the second half of the race.

My final time ended up 95 mins 58 seconds and placed 771st out of a field of 4639 finishing runners. So I am really happy with the final result, since all my training was aiming for 95 minutes anyhow. Since I got pretty close to the time I was aiming for, even with a blister slowing me down, I reckon I can easily run a half in under 95 minutes and perhaps with some more endurance training get my time closer to 90 minutes.

I passed the line a couple of minutes earlier

I’ll probably aim for the Sydney Running Festival half marathon in September.

My running goals for the year are:

• SMH Half Marathon in approximately 95 minutes: done!
• Bay Run in under 30 mins: July 29th.
  Time to beat: 30:39
• City 2 Surf in 60 mins or under: August 12th.
  Time to beat: 65:07
• Sydney Running Festival Half Marathon in between 90 to 95 minutes: September 23rd.
  Time to beat: 95:58
• A 10km race in as close to 40 minutes as possible. Perhaps one of the Sydney Striders 10km monthly races.

Gladly, for the next two weeks, the training for the race is a tapering down of intensity, so the longest I’ll run is 10km next weekend and for my tempo, it’ll only be a 5km and a 3km run. Phew! My legs should be pretty fresh for the 21kms of the marathon. I’ll be glad once its all over.

More updates when I get the time. I’m in the process of moving stuff around from various servers.

The week before the race, I ramped things back up again. Did two 5kms runs out at work in Cumberland Forest, with one of them being a personal best for that course of 21:24. Also twice hit the gym to use the bike which really helped with my leg and knee strength. On the Friday evening, I did a nice, quick 7km around Moore Park at about 80% pace which I finished in 31:18, so I was feeling pretty good after that.

Had Saturday off to go to a wedding but I didn’t make it home until about 11:30pm, which I wasn’t too happy about. Then Rozie came home from the wedding at 1:30am, then she was feeling crook at about 3:30am, which I helped her out as much as I could. I woke up at about 5:45am having only had what felt like about 4 hours sleep.

Got myself down to Central Station to catch the train over to Milsons Point, since I had to get my bag onto the trucks before 7am. Got to Milsons Point around 6.45am. After I put my bag on the trucks, I thought sleeping probably wasn’t a good idea for my race performance, so I just sat in the sun until about 7:30am, feeling super-crap. Had bit of a warm up, a quick pee and joined the other runners ready for the race at 8.05am.

Now there’s supposed to be self-seeding, but that didn’t seem to work out too well. Lots of walkers pushing into the front area. A lot like City2Surf (although admittedly not as bad). Megan Gale fired the starting gun, which was a pretty damn good start IMHO!!

So the race went up the road from Milsons Point, up over the Sydney Harbour Bridge (I didn’t really look too hard), along the Cahill Expressway, up Macquarie St, down Gallery Rd to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and back, back down Macquarie St, then to the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. *phew*!

For most of the race, I was pulling in 4:20mins/km, which was I really happy with, since up until recently I’ve running at around 4:30mins/km. I still managed to see I swear the same little kid who runs most of the race ahead of me that I saw at the Bay Run and City2Surf.

Right near the end of the race at the roundabout near the Opera House I quickly saw Rozie waiting for me and she gave me a quick cheer which helped me make a final dash for the end.

So I ended up finishing the race in 37:59mins, which was way better than the 39 to 40 minutes time I’d set for myself. And in the field of 7100 odd runners, I finished 186th (that’s not adjusted… I’ll probably rank better once the results are finalised).

So all in all, I was super-stoked with my time and performance. After a creaky start, it really felt good and just rolled nicely along. Next year, I’m planning on perhaps doing a half-marathon or two, and with the time I did on Sunday, I reckon I’ll easily smash that sub-60min goal for the City2Surf to pieces.