Tuesday, November 21, 2006

I was starting to get worried!

Good day faithful readers. Several months ago I booked my flights back to Australia via New York, and using my frequent flyers miles it only cost me a couple of hundred dollars after taxes. I was hoping to be able to use my frequent flyers miles to get me back to London too, but unfortunately I couldn't find a flight that had seat allocated to frequent flyers any time in the first three months of the year.

Oh well I though. I guess that I'll just have to pay for that leg of the journey... of course that didn't mean that I instantly went and booked that return flight. Of course not. Foolishly I thought that I'd delay that expense for a little while so that it didn't make such a dent in my balance.

Having just spent the last two days frantically searching the website's of every airline that I could think of just trying to find someone who had seats available, regardless of cost, I'm now thinking that was a bad move. Initially I couldn't find anything within 4 days either side of when I wanted to leave, and even then I was facing the prospect of paying around triple what I should have been paying.

Then I checked Air New Zealand. Flights on the day that I want, and although a little expensive (I should be able to get a return for the same price normally), not unacceptable. I have to fly the wrong way around the world (ie. via the US), but at least I'm not going to find myself stuck in Australia. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Like a pig in s**t

Good day faithful readers. Today was the day of the Hellrunner, which you'll remember I spoke about a few posts back. Just as I suspected, I finished cold, muddy, tired and very happy! There are more pictures to follow, but attached is one I took of my feet after I had crossed the finish line... those socks used to be white!

Before the race started I had to do a bit of a warm up, so I thought that I might as well run along the course and get an idea of what it was going to be like. I only ran about half a kilometer, but from what I could tell the route seemed to be following a compacted dirt road. Maybe this won't be as bad I thought.

When the race started I took off at a reasonable sort of pace, but soon found that the route turned off the dirt road and I was forced to slow down a bit. It still wasn't too bad though. It was a lot like when I was living in Surrey and used to run around Wisley Common. This lasted for about the first 3miles. Up until this point I was still relatively pristine. This quickly changed as we hit our first pond. I took it relatively easy and stuck to the side where I thought that it would be a little shallower. After I saw another competitor go barreling through the middle only to nearly disappear when he discovered it was significantly deeper than he expected I decided to continue this tactic.

Little did I realise that this particular pond was going one of the least troublesome features of the race.

Over the course of the race there were probably about six ponds, each at least 20m long and at least knee deep. In some of them the water seemed to be so cold that it hurt. You step in them and you can almost hear the blood saying "I'm not going down there!" as your muscles begin to cramp up. In some of them you'd be happily wading through knee deep water only to come across a random hole and suddenly sink up to you chest. Probably the most memorable through was one which wasn't so much a pond as a bog. It was likely wading through knee deep porridge. You emerged looking like you'd you just been playing in sewerage! God help you if you happened to fall over in that.

Although the ponds were uncomfortable, they allowed you to slow down and catch your breathe (unless the cold was taking it away), the bit that made the race tiring was the constant barrage of hills. Over the 17km I climbed a total of over 400m. I managed to run up just about every hill, but there were some that were just so step and the ground so unstable that you were forced to walk. Quite often you'd find yourself passing people attempting to run anyway. I used this tactic to great effect toward the end of the race when they made us run up a sand dune 5 times in a row. Its just what you need at the end of a long race, to run up hill on loose sand!

Anyways, I finally made it to the end and even managed to put in a sprint to the finish line. You finish feeling cold, dirty and unbelievably tired, but strangely its all in equal measure with how jubilant you feel. Judging from how dirty one guy I saw was (I suspect he when face first into the bog), he must have been just about jumping out of his skin!

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them

Good day faithful readers. Yesterday I visited the field of Remembrance in from of Westminster Abbey for Remembrance Day. The follow is a nice quote that someone had placed alongside on of the regiments. I thought that I would share it with you all.

"Its not the critic, who counts, or how the strong man stumbled and fell, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, and spends himself in a worthy cause; and if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that he'll never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt