A one-live cat’s life

I ditched my Woodstock Saturday run this weekend because I scheduled to join a walk with CS friends to palm beach this Saturday. It was a good schedule i thought because i was meaning to do rest a day before i was suppose to do  the Sri Chimnoy half marathon the day after.

Even after a party the night before coming home past 1 in the morning, drunk, I managed to get up and be on time at our meeting point in Erskenville with Amy who volunteered to drive to the trip. It was raining when we started the trip, and the day was cloudy. It took us around more than an hour to drive up the Palm beach area. It was Amy, An-young, Alex and me and met Matt in the beach, where we walked towards the light house. We did cross over to the banks of Pitt water Basin before going up the light house.

Took us round 30 - 45 minutes to get there, according to Matt, who was a local in the area, it was the shorter but steeper route.

After which we had lunch picnic with the annoying cold breeze, and after we continued walking towards Avalon Beach. Along the way we passed Whale beach unfortunately we did not spot any whales that day.

Then it started to rain, and so we decided to just walk back to the car and go to the Arms Hotel where we were told that they do serve good cocktails. Inset is pink mojito which was yummy.

It was very windy that day that we did not do any sun basking, but we got whipped a lot by natural exfoliant combination of wind and sand a lot. We got back at the City by past 7pm. It was fun and tiring trip with lots of steep stairs to climb!

Yes, I did finally decide to do the half marathon 2 weeks ago for the Sydney Blackmore’s Marathon Running Festival, a day before the event organizers raised the registration fee for non-early birds. I chose running a half over 1) staying in Singapore for holidays and watch the 1st ever F1 night race 2) take days off and go home to Philippines for a week. The Sydney Bridge Run is on September 21, 2008 with walker and runners for the 9kms, and a half and a full marathon.

Unprepared, if that’s how i will call it. Cramming! I have been lazy the past two weeks when I registered, no long runs longer than 20KMs and to top on that is traveling to Singapore meaning i might be stuck at the Hotel gym, for shorter limited time. Although fortunately i was able to fit 3 runs outdoors and 1 run at the treadmill during the business trip.

recap:
Sunday: 10KM Race
Monday: 10KM Singapore (5xpark)

Tuesday: 4KM Treadmill, Singapore
Wednesday: 7KM Singapore

Thursday: Rest
Friday: 7KM Singapore (with colleague KweeChuan @ Alexandra towards the canopy walk and no idea it was up hill!, although it was )
Total pw:38KMs

It will be my first half marathon. So i am nervous, unpsyched and worried i might be too tired to run because of my trip. To add that, flying do get you dehydrated. I did only drank 1 cup red wine as it is health and kept on drinking water in the flight. Always asking for two cups instead of default 1. Lucky it was pasta for tea so i was also starting to carbo load aside from the chicken rice i have been having on that week!

Race packets needed to be picked up from that week, but i am in Singapore, so i asked my roomie to pick it up for me.Thanks Aileen! It did include my bib, magazine and information phamplet and my chip.

Arriving “home” past 7pmish of 20th of September at home from a trip from Singapore (I’ve done this before, going home for a weekend to race but for 10KMs not half!!) and on my way home I rang John as I arranged to pick up my Woodstock Cap. So I dropped my bags off and literally jogging to John’s place to get the cap so i get enough rest after. Why the cap? I decided to wear both colors of my club back my home country Philippines, h@ppy feet, and my Oz running club Woodstock. (Thanks John and Dot for arranging this for me!) I headed home with a box of pizza for dinner (carbo and high calorie loading).

Slept 1130pm, booked a cab for 510am of the 21st. Set my alarm at 420am.

I did have good rest but not enough sleep, since my body is still running at Singapore time and 420 means 220am. Finally got up by 435am. Had my shower, changed to my gear and did some good stretching. Cab arrived on time and reached the starting line 30 minutes before the race start at 620am. Continued on Part 2.