Hello!!!
First of all I really need to explain the title this time around! I always aim to think of something that will be slightly interesting and eye catching (I'm sure the one called Update must have been a hangover day!) Now given my recent addictive viewing of So You Think You Can Dance, hip popping could be a reference to the cool stuff the street dancers were doing. Sadly, it is actually a reference to my hip and leaves me convinced I will be needing a replacement at some point in the next couple of years. The hip popping incident occurred in the Blackmores Half-marathon I took part in yesterday so I'll get to that in a bit! Now I just need to remember what I did for the couple of weeks before that!!!
So it is officially Spring out here now and so far it has been AWESOME!!! Last Saturday the weather was sunny and the temperature was between 25-30 degrees depending on where you were. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttttttttttttttttttt!!! Beach time!!! I actually went to Palm Beach which is where Home & Away is filmed so that was pretty cool. I didn't see anyone from the show though. The weather was amazing but I failed to catch even a hint of sun and remained a lighter shade of pasty. After a couple of hours at Palm Beach (which despite only being 30km north of Sydney took about 90 minutes to get to cos the roads out here are crap), it was back on the road to head back to Manly to check that out for the first time. Manly is beautiful and I reckon I could easily live there if I was able to get to work. After a bit of a wander and some dinner, I donned my lovely new England RL shirt (thank you M&D - Merry Xmas me!) and headed to Brookvale Oval to watch Manly v St George in the first round of the NRL Finals Series. I got a few funny looks in my shirt, mainly I think because people assumed it was a St George shirt due to being the same colour but the design is obviously completely different! Nobody gave me any stick though which I was expecting!
The game was excellent and I tried my hardest to get on TV but was unsuccessful. It was a great atmosphere though and Steve Menzies played his last home game before heading to the Bradford Dulls (yes I did mean to type Dulls) in 2009. I don't think I've ever been to a ground where you can just sit on the grass with a beer in hand and watch a game of rugby. It was awesome!!!
On the Sunday the weather decided it was going to pee it down and boy did it rain. Again! I went for lunch in Watson's Bay which is on the North Shore and saw the place whose name I can't remember but is apparently the most popular place in Sydney for suicide. Lovely. I was suprised so many people died there was the cliff wasn't actually that high. I reckon a lot of people have probably jumped and ended up seriously injured, rueing the fact that they didn't pick a higher cliff! After that it wwas dinner in Erskinville where I met Jeanette's son and his gf. They're pretty cool and I had a good day out.
During the week was pretty quiet. I like to sleep a lot so I do. Went to the Imax on Tuesday to see The Dark Knight which is excellent although Heath Ledger is actually pretty scary in it.
This weekend the weather was gorgeous again - hooray!!! Since it was pay day I went shopping to Bondi Junction and bought my new Summer wardrobe and then managed an hour or 2 on the beach at Bondi which was packed to the rafters!!! Still no hint of a tan and I'm beginning to wonder what all the fuss is about out here! I've been in the sun for ages and I'm still totally pale!
Sunday was marathon day and despite not feeling as fit as I would have liked I actually put in a fairly decent performance I reckon. I had to get up at 4.15am which sucked but after the heat from Saturday (31 degrees) I can see why they put the race on so early. The half marathon was the first to go at 6.20am and I successfully managed to miss the start after having to queue for half an hour to use the toilet!! Fortunately I only missed it by a couple of minutes so I was able to tag onto the back of the group.
This was the first race I've done where I haven't been running for a charity or with a group of people so I was feeling a lot less pressure than normal and I actually quite enjoyed it. I had my ipod cranked up loud and wasn't worrying about the people passing me cos I knew later on I'd be able to pick a few of them off.
The marathon course is pretty flat and you get to run across the Harbour bridge which is pretty cool although I kept losing my balance from looking upwards so much! Apart from that the course itself isn't the greatest. There are no residential areas on the course so nobody really comes out to watch which makes it difficult I think.
Anyway, the main concern was just to get to 9km in under 80 minutes as if I didn't I'd be disqualified!! Unfortunately, at about 7km my hip went pop (hence the title). This actually sounds worse than it is. My hip doesn't literally pop, it just feels like it's going to pop out of it's socket. I knew this would happen at some point but I hoped it would be well after 7km. After that I knew a decent time was out of the window so I figured the best thing to do was keep enjoying myself and keep singing to my iPod and forget about my hip.
I made it to 9km in 67 minutes and then began the journey back to the Opera House (basically the course goes from Sydney out to Haberford then back again!)
At 14km disaster struck and the water that I'd been pouring over my head finally got the better of my headphones and they stopped working!! This was even worse than the pain in my hip cos I can't function properly without music! I tried everything to fix them but nothing happened so I had to cover the last 7km without music. Disaster!!!
So the last 7km went without incident really and as I came to the last 1km I knew my friend was going to be there with the camera so there was no way he was seeing me walking so I put a burst on, picked a bunch of people off that were lagging and sailed over the line in a new personal best time of 2 hours, 43 minutes and 26 seconds. Not very fast I know but a PB is a PB and given the lack of training I've done I reckon I've definitely got some faster times in me somewhere!
All in all it was a good day. I have my enthusiasm back for running again (even though we didn't get medals and only got a poxy keyring - Aussies = cheapskates!) and am excited about the prospect of maybe running London next year if I can get in.
The rest of the day was spent lying on the sofa just cos it hurt too much to move, The only movement I did make was to bed.
I have another weekend off this weekend as the NRL decided the play both Finals games at the Football Stadium grrr but no idea what I'm going to do. I may go to the rugby and I'm definitely going to get drunk just cos I haven't been drunk for ages!! Oh and I might enjoy some more glorious sunshine too!! Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee xxx
