Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Stupid things we agree to after some drinks

Friday 15th December was our work Christmas Party, since I am now back in Australia I was luckily invited to the Australia Christmas party. 

This year we had lunch and drinks at a function room next to work. It was a quite bit different to my Christmas party last year which involved us having lunch at the Straits Kitchen at the Grand Hyatt Singapore. Side note... anyone visiting Singapore and wanting to try a buffet full of local food go to Straits Kitchen. It will cost you a bit more than eating locally but a good way to try lots of different local foods. 

After our lunch a group of us decided that we were going to extend the christmas party at a pub not too far away. We chose Caulfield thinking there would be plenty of good bars around since it's close to a university. We apparently were wrong, nothing apart from 2 bars with a sports bar and pokie area. 

So we chose 1 place and had a few drinks. During the night we quizzed one of my colleagues on when he was going to run a 1km he had bet he could run about 6 months ago. Apparently whilst I was off sick this colleague believed he could run 1km in 3 minutes which later got changed to 4 minutes... for any of my U.S friends 1 kilometer is about .62 miles. 

Out of nowhere, four of us had suddenly agreed to run a kilometer each with the goal of getting under 20 minutes for the 4 kilometers...... for those who are not Albert Einstein this means each of us needed 5 minute kilometers....... Damn you beer!!!!!

To put it in perspective, my quickest run after months of training was a 5km in 23:30. This is pretty much 4 min 40 seconds kilometers and after minimal training we were proposing 4 of us run under 5 minute kilometers. So the date was set, Tuesday 18th December would be the day we tested our limits. 

Come Tuesday it was a fantastic weather wise with about 25 degrees and sunny. We had chosen a track near work which was a proper athletics track (400 meter ring with a spongy ground). Each of us were required to do 2.5 laps which was the total of 1km. 

After working out the racing order we were ready to start, I luckily was running as the 3rd runner. Being the fitness fanatics we were we obviously did a warmup and a stretch of about 30 seconds...... who knew this wasn't long enough. We had luckily recruited some colleagues who had kindly decided to be our timekeepers for the run. After a countdown our first runner was off as quick as a teenage boy on his prom night. 

After the first 400 meters he was tracking fantastically at 1:30. If he kept this up we were looking at a 3:45 kilometer. We all expected our first runner to die off because all morning we had all discussed how we couldn't do a kilometer under 5 minutes. To our surprise the first runner came in at roughly 3:50. Suddenly our second runner was off.

After 600 meters our second runner was look great as well. His time was just over 3 minutes with only 400 meters to complete..... but our lack of warmup and stretching was soon about to bite us. With only 300 meters left in his lap our 2nd runner came to the ground in pain with a Hammy (Hamstring Injury). Suddenly visions of how we were going to explain this to our EHS officer came up in our minds, luckily our final runner was running alongside our 2nd runner so he took over the last 300 meters. 

The second leg ended up with a time of 4:07..... damn they are quick. Finally it was my time to prove that the tortoise doesn't always finish first. I took off and my first 100 meters felt great, I was flying along. I turned the corner and suddenly God decided he hates me and I realised there was a head wind stronger than Cyclone Tracey I had to content with (granted I may be exaggerating the wind). After the first lap I had clocked 1:45 which was obviously slower than my mates but still pretty good for me. 

The next lap was pretty brutal, my heart rate hadn't been this high since I had watched the Victoria Secret fashion show. Man I was struggling for every single breath I took, at the 800 meter mark I was at 3:40 with 200 meters left. 

200 meters left, I have always been a big believer in always finishing strong in any form of sport. If you are running always (in training and races) sprint the last part. We also always trained that way in dragon boat racing (Ready for Charge?....... READY!). 

So with 200 meters left I gave it all I had, I turned that corner and tackled Cyclone Tracey head first. In my mind I felt like I was re-enacting a Warner Bros. cartoon where the character runs on the spot for a long time before blasting off. I was pushing as hard as I could and felt like I was going nowhere, but persistence paid off and I finished with a time of 4:35. 

Our last runner was off after I tagged him and mind you our last runner was our fittest person. True to form he didn't disappoint us either, finishing with a total time of 3:35 for the 1km. 

That was it we were finished, after a quick calculation we had achieved our 4km in a total time of 16:07!!!! VICTORY, we spent the rest of the day feeling like champions and basking in our own glory.  There are definitely worse ways to spend a lunch break on a Tuesday. 

I have to give thanks to my fellow runners for organising this and our amazing support crew and time keepers. I have always believed that within my work there are 3 main factors I look for, they are:

1. Remuneration
2. Learning
3. Fun / Enjoyment

If in any job I have at least 2 of those items then I am more likely to stay in that current job. I'm glad that the office I am currently working in fills point number 3 and keeps the place enjoyable. 

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Run the whole 5km???? You're dreaming

Thursday the 25th October was the day Melissa posted a message to me on Facebook saying we should do a 5km fun run called the "Color Run" (I know Color should be spelt Colour but it's an American event). A Colour run means you run around a 5km course and roughly at every 1km mark a different colour is thrown on you. After the 5km you are covered with 4 different colours.

This event sounded like so much fun, but back in October I had managed a to walk 5km in 50 minutes. Not really the speed demon that I figured I needed to be to complete a fun run. But after wasting too much of this year and feeling I needed something to motivate me I signed up. 

The first step was to register a team name.... well one night I was bored whilst waiting for a midnight meeting. So as you do at that time of the night I came up with some ripper suggestions including:


1. Skittles
2. Double rainbow (OMG it's a double rainbow.... WOOOOO)
3. Colour Blind
4. "You had me at Yellow"
5. Dye Hard (or Dye hards)6. I see dyed people
7. The Walking Dyed
8. Princess's Dyed (Didn't really work cause I was in the team)

Mel decided to choose Colour Blind which in the end worked really well. In theory a team consisted of 4 people and you all paid $5 less if you registered as a team. Unfortunately we couldn't get a team of 4 people and our team only consisted of 3 people. Luckily we believe Colour Blind would be a common team name so we got away entering the event with only 3 people. 

After that night quite a few weeks of training happened. I installed an app on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Android Phone) called Endomondo and I started tracking all my walks and runs. Since the race wasn't going to be timed I decided that my goal before the race was to run 5km in under 35 minutes. After a few weeks of training I reached that goal on Melbourne Cup day (Tuesday 6th November) by clocking 6.08km in 41m14s. That was helped by the lightning storm that was approaching whilst I was running.... don't they say "If you can out run a lightning storm you can outrun anything"?..... Ahhhh no sorry that was a dodge ball. 

Sunday 25th November finally approached and the weather forecast wasn't great. It was going to be low 20's (degrees not farenheit) with a slight chance of rain. But cold weather wasn't going to get us down so after meeting at Mel's at 7:45 Gemma, Mel and I were on our way. 

We got to Flemington racecourse after finding a pretty convenient carpark (thank you Tom) and walked to the back of the queue for the people waiting at the starting line. That queue was massive, we literally had to walk nearly a kilometer to reach the back of the line. The line then slowly inched forward as different waves of people were let free to run. 

After lining up for over 30 minutes we finally reached the starting line. At the starting line music was playing and a guy was throwing free stuff into the crowd (Who loves free stuff?). It was a great atmosphere with everyone dancing and signing, either pumped for the start of the run or pumped for free stuff. 

After a countdown of 10, 9.............. literally the guy only counted to 9 and stopped, we were off and running. After 200 meters I was wondering what the hell I was doing. I was a bit out of breathe and all I was thinking was 6 months ago I couldn't walk. I shouldn't be running yet, this is crazy. 

But thankfully I had Gemma and Melissa there with me. Not really for moral support but mainly because I felt I couldn't be shown up by girls. So I pushed through the pain, just like Chuck Norris would if he was human. After what we thought was the first kilometer but felt a lot longer we got to the first Colour station.... BLUE. 

Running through the blue station there were people spraying you with the Blue Colouring (which I think is a type of colouring and corn flour). It was so cool because suddenly all you could see was blue everywhere (random image below)
















After the blue station we all met up and surveyed the damage. It seemed that Gemma had got hit worse than Mel and myself. Mainly because Gemma was infront and took the brunt of the damage. 

From blue we kept running and went through more colour stations. At roughly the 3km mark we made a detour and started running on the racecourse. This was so cool, we were actually running on the grass where the Melbourne cup is run. Surprisingly the grass is really long and relative hard to run on. 

We kept running on the track through 2 more colour stations and finally past the finish line. By the end we had a fair bit of colour over us but we weren't covered. Also it didn't feel like a 5km run but that could also be because during the colour stations we ran a bit slower to get a bit more covered. 
Mel and I at the finish line. 5km! Suck on that cancer!






















After collecting our free water bottle and packet of colour (they give you a free packet of colour) we made our way to the dance area. The dance area had massive speakers, music playing and heaps of people. The DJ counted us all down and suddenly everyone has thrown the colour out of their packets into the sky. Out of nowhere I could no longer see Gemma and Mel standing next to me. All I could see was Colour, it was soooo cool. 


From the outside it looks like this

From the inside it looks like this

And that was how I spent the morning of Sunday 25th November. I'm grateful that Mel told us about the event and even more grateful that her and Gemma ran with me (even though I have no doubt they could have kicked my ass if they wanted to).

I can't wait until I can run the Happiest 5km on the planet next year.