I’ve
remained alcohol free for over 28 days and as a team one other work collegue
and myself have managed to raise $675 in sponsorship for the Royal Melbourne
Hospital Cancer wards, it’s amazing how people will give you money when they
know they don’t have to buy you a drink. With my end of month funds from Book Depository
affiliate sales to still come we may crack the $700 mark yet. A huge thanks to
all our sponsors, you can see their messages of encouragement or drop a few
dollars our way at our fundraising web page at https://www.dryjuly.com/team/djerscgu.
The hardest part this week was the thank you lunch put on by
my boss at an Italian restaurant where bottles of very nice Chianti were being
offered. Back in 2000 I spent part of my honeymoon in a small villa in the
wonderful village of Loro Chiuffena, on the Chianti outskirts, and every time I
see a bottle of wine with the black rooster or pink/purple neck tie my mouth
does water for the sangiovese taste. Geepers I’m making my bloody mouth water
just writing this!!! But I did stick strong, having a couple of Chinotto’s and
lemonatas, with my spaghetti. I had to follow that up with a team event at a
local venue known for its overpriced drinks, atrocious service, staff with more
body ink than your usual suspect but is popular due to its proximity to work
(ie. It’s in the same building), where I got a soda water (although I’d ordered
tonic) for the bargain basement price of $3.50 from a bloke who apparently speaks
English but either his accent is that strong or his piercings interfere with
his lip movement as I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. On my bike
early as even though it can be entertaining, watching colleagues have a ball on
the sauce is not really my idea of a great night out. So all up, I’ve just about lasted a month (would
be a month if it was February) without the truth serum and I’m a strong
possibility to back it up for quite a while longer.
For people who don’t know where (or how) to start with
helping out a local charity, here’s a simple idea for you. At work we arranged
a morning tea on Friday for National “Stress Down” Day, an event organised to
raise funds for Lifeline who provide crisis support and suicide prevention services,
they do ask you to wear your pyjamas or slippers, we didn’t go that far as we
thought the office “casual clothes Friday” policy might be breached having a
bunch of professionals sitting around in flannelette jimjams. Quite a number of
people brought in some home baked goodies and with a gold coin donation to
taste them we managed to raise $284.20 for the cause. Easy to arrange, and
effective if you can get 10/15 people to bake and 50 or 60 people to come along
and eat. More info on the Lifeline services can be found at http://www.lifeline.org.au/
Another event that quite a few of us are getting behind is
Ultra Spirit, a 7.6km Fun Run, two laps of the Tan a running track around
Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens. The event is being staged to raise funds for
Kate Sanderson and Turia Pitt, two girls tragically burnt in bush fires while
taking part in a 100km ultra marathon in the Kimberly Desert last year. Fund
raised will go to the girls to help them with their vast ongoing medical and
living costs. Full details of the girls courage and the horrific journey they
have gone through can be seen at http://www.ultraspirit.com.au/. At
this stage we have at least 5 runners taking part as a team and are hoping to
get it up to 10 or so as our work place has agreed to match our fund raising $
for $ so the more we raise the better it is for Kate and Turia. If you’re
interested in participating or donating, let me know or simply visit the event
website mentioned above or our fundraising page at http://www.everydayhero.com.au/team_cgu.
Personally, I’ll donate September’s book sales commission (5% of anything you at
Book Depository if you use the link on the right hand side of this blog) to
this cause.
Onto the running, Training program said a 3km time trial
Tuesday, 30 min run Wed and Friday and a one hour 15 min run on Sunday. So I
did the time trail Tuesday (down 9 secs since my last one only two weeks prior),
jogged 40 mins on Wednesday, 5.31kms and participated in ParkRun (5kms) on
Saturday. ParkRun was a must this week as it was an Olympic themed run,
everyone dressing up and having fun and I was fortunate enough to win one of
the best dressed prizes for my ridiculous USA outfit. The morning was a scream
with flags galore, fake torches, my “I run 100kms for a hobby” buddy wearing a
massive set of Olympic rings (as you do when you run 5kms in 30 mins!!!), a Seb
Coe lookalike, boxing kangaroos and more. There were laughs all round, a great
sense of camaraderie and this all lead to a fun morning being had by all, including
the people out for a Saturday stroll a number of who cheered us on and stopped
to watch 67 colourful idiots enjoying themselves. I also ran a personal best of
32.01 for the 5 clicks so am slowly closing in on that 30 min barrier. If you
are up for a 5km weekly run, where you can run slowly and improve slowly you
should check out the ParkRun website, they have free timed events all over the
globe. A great way to get started, fitter and to have fun at the same time!!!
Sunday a 14km long run – as you would do on a Sunday. Was
talked into a “3 laps of Albert Park” long run by a couple of the ParkRunners.
Mr “100km for fun” man arrived about 5 mins after myself looking a bit tired –
turns out he’d already done 28 kms, all part of a cunning plan clock up a full
marathon distance for the morning. We were joined by two others and they set
off at a brisk 6 min per km pace (I was planning 7 min k’s – this was not a day
for personal bests it was a day for a long steady run). Needless to say after
three kilometres I let them disappear into the distance and dropped it back a
notch. One lap in (close to 5 kms) we’d lost one to a hammy strain and one had
dropped the pace back a bit to keep up with me and keep me motivated. I was plugging along in my zone, two laps in I
was hurting and my escort was off again trying to run down the leader, my legs
were tight, but I gave myself a mental jolt “less than a single ParkRun
distance to go” and away I plugged.
When I hit the 10km mark I was pumped, certain I’d run a
personal best for that distance and this was a training run. Head went up,
smile appeared and the “four k’s to go, four k’s to go” chant began. Another
kilometre down and I purposely listened to the birds tweeting away, “if they’re
happy so am I”, clocked up one more and it had become the furthest I had run
without a break, one more and the I was joined by another ParkRunner who had
put in an earlier 26kms or so (as you do on a Sunday!!!) who made me feel good
as he was SPENT, 200 metres further up the path the breakaways came wandering
towards me to encourage me home. I was in the zone, wasn’t stopping 600 metres
or so out, so off I trotted. Made the finish area clocking up 14.19 kms in
1:40.06. Later discovering I was 1 second UNDER a ten kilometre personal best….oh
well maybe next week.
Not a lot of laughs this week just a standard training
effort. Maybe next week something of note will happen that will give you a giggle.
But I’m pretty proud, here’s a bloke who could not run more than 200 metres now
running (slowly mind you) 14 clicks without a break (a couple of water stops of
15/20 secs I don’t count as “breaks”) and I think I’m well on track for my
first half marathon in 11 weeks’ time – only need to increase today’s distance
by a further 50% surely that’s possible.
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