Author Archives: Ivar the Salacious

Noosa half marathon

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The last two weeks before the race were rubbish. I hurt my quadriceps muscles (that’s the front of the thigh). I think I ran too fast downhill and my legs weren’t used to that kind of stress. Anywho there was one day I was in so much pain I couldn’t fall asleep and had to take some painkillers (paracetamol – the label said it’s good for muscle pain). After that incident I took training way easier.

I started to cycle (I’m terrible at that) and swim. OK, I went to a pool once. And I was terrible at swimming too. I turns out that there’s a bit of technique involved in swimming. You use your hands for 3 strokes and then breathe, repeat. Also there are several strokes to use e.g. butterfly, freestyle, back crawl. I’ll get better, I hope.
I sent a bunch of couchsurfing requests into the Sunshine Coast area and was lucky to find a host. I knew that I’d rather be a bit social than spend the day alone in a hotel/hostel thinking and worrying about my run the day before the race.

I made some chocolate chip cookies for my host, bought two GU energy gels for the race and drove to Noosa to pick up my racing pack. Later I met my CS host Brock and his family. I was positively surprised by the two Swedish girls who were also guests at Brock’s place. The more the merrier…

OK race day. I drove to Noosa and parked about 3 km away from the start line. This was good because I wanted to jog a bit for my warm-up. My leg was slightly hurting and I was pondering whether I should not run at all. Since the route was very flat I decided to give it a go.

I was happy there was no long piss-line. Soon after my bladder was emptied I was standing in the crowd of runners before the start line.

My goal was the same as in my previous Twilight half marathon – to run a sub 100 minute race. 30 seconds of silence for Boston and a bit later the race started. I went a bit slower this time.

The weather was perfect and running felt quite good. My first lap was quite easy – 47 minutes and I felt good because I was on pace to finish in less than 100 minutes. I planned to  go all out in the last 5 km of the second lap but I just didn’t have the energy. Instead of speeding up I actually slowed down and people started to pass me. It took me about 49 minutes for the second lap.

I finished my first half marathon in 1:36:36 and I’m very happy with my result. After the race I thought that normally I do yoga after running so I should do it this time too.  Sure it was a bit strange to do yoga in public but hey, it’s part of my running ritual. It was a bit funny but other runners around me started to stretch and do pigeon and similar poses as well.

From now on I will work on my endurance and speed. I might run another half marathon in 5 weeks and try finishing in less than 90 minutes. I think it’s a realistic goal.

Ivar

Not an average Joe

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Last Monday I went to Joe Satriani’s Masterclass Clinic (similar to a concert event but with a focus on teaching). He’s one of the world’s best guitar players and teachers. For example he taught Kirk Hammett (from Metallica) to play guitar.

It was a really cool event. I enjoyed listening to him play and thought that I needed to practice way more if I wanted to play anything like him. His song “Always with me, always with you”  gave me goosebumps. It’s a powerful song!

The highlight of the event was when everybody got a chance to meet Joe and get his autograph. I had Jane (my guitar) with me and got my cherished John Hancock. Now my guitar is worth millions 😀 I’m rich!

With Satriani

I remember my guitar teacher Erik once told me that he’d wish to get Satriani’s autograph on his guitar. Now I feel like I’ve got a very special instrument at home. I’m almost afraid to play it.

OK. New Zealand. I still don’t know what the deal was with my chest X-ray. I picked up two envelopes. One of them was sealed, I guess they don’t want the applicants to be able to tamper with the results. So I don’t know what the doc wrote about my lungs. The other envelope had the X-ray pictures but since I’m no doctor I wasn’t able to see any abnormalities. Anywho…  I just put the envelopes into another envelope and happily mailed it to the embassy in Sydney. Now all what’s left to do is wait for a decision about my visa application.

Today is also my first day living in solitude – both of my roommates moved out. OK, Benn moved out only temporarily. I was heart-broken when I discovered he took his juicer with him. What a dick move! Why didn’t he discuss that issue with me? Maybe I wasn’t OK with him taking it… We just never talk anymore…

Am I going to die?

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What’s the point of scheduling an appointment if nobody cares about it? My chest X-ray was supposed to be at 2 PM. I arrived 15 minutes earlier, waited in line for 20 minutes to get to the receptionist and then had to wait another 30 minutes to get to the “radiology” room. Welcome to Australia!

The real kicker was this: after taking the X-ray the radiologist told me that he needed to do a second X-ray. I told myself “no reason to panic, I probably moved when the picture was taken or something”. Before the second attempt I was asked whether I’ve had chest pains. Not to my knowledge. And that was it, no further comment about my lungs. Am I fine? What was wrong with the picture? Am I going to die? Great things to ponder about for the next couple of days…

Another retarded thing is that I need to come back to the clinic in 2 business days to pick up the X-ray paperwork and mail it to Sydney. Why can’t the people at the clinic mail it themselves? It’s just stupid.

I hope all this trouble is worth it,
Ivar

PS: It’s not my X-ray in the picture.

3:07

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I took a blank sheet of paper and wrote in big red digits (and a letter) 3:07 M and put it on my wall. That’s my goal for a marathon (27th July 2013). The reason it’s 3:07 is because my aunt ran a marathon in 3h 8m. I must run a faster time! Never mind that she’s a former Olympic athlete. My 7 months of training will be more than enough to beat her time 😀 (I just finished my 3rd training month, celebration time?).

Since I need to move my behind a bit faster I decided to add some speedwork to my training sessions. I did some research and introduced fartlek to my 10 and 8K runs. It’s actually something Emily told me about. She said that I should sprint from a streetlight to another one, then recover until the next streetlight and start sprinting after it. Repeat until you’re at home. It’s a good way to learn to run faster.

I really liked my first fartlek session. It was a very creative run, time just passed by. I created several triggers for sprints. For example each time I stepped on a brick I would sprint, a dog barking at me also meant to run faster, reaching a roundabout meant running as fast as possible until the next roundabout.

Every time I was in a park I ran as if dropbears were chasing me until I was out of the park. It was interesting. The last 5 runs resulted in 4 personal best times. Clearly this technique works… or maybe I’m just super awesome. Yeah, that’s probably it! 😀

Dropbears

Since my workday has very early starts (4AM) I need to go running even earlier. During my last 10K run I saw a man in the distance. It was around 2:15 AM and he said “hello”. Then he asked me where I was running. I said “home” and then as I got closer I saw that he was a policeman. I knew I was running a good time and as I got next to him I said really quickly: “10K run, doing a personal best”… and I waived and off I was. I completely blew him off. 😀 He just stared and thought I was a weirdo. 😀 (PS: My time was 43m40s, not exactly superfast, yet!).

Today was my first run in my new compression calf sleeves. Those bad boys are really tight. I hope, I’m sorry, I know, they will be my ticket to a future Olympic gold. 😀 I also noticed that my thighs felt very much left out. They wanted some love too… I guess I know what’s next on my shopping list.

Allrighty, slight change of topic. Yesterday, I applied for a New Zealand Working Holiday Visa and tomorrow I will need to get a chest X-ray to prove that I don’t have any deadly contagious diseases.  All this will cost me about AUD 230.

It’s a bit sad to think about it but it seems that I’ll be staying in Australia only until December. Maybe it’s for the best. You know what? I don’t even want to think about it. Not yet. I will focus on making the most of my last 8 months here.

Ivar

Worth it!

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Don’t you just love those days when you get home and fall asleep before your head touches the pillow? I sure do! Last Wednesday was one of those days.

After work I donated blood. I was very disappointed after my weight was measured. Three months of training and I’m still at 74 kg. I’m eating more, I’m exercising but no weight gain. Sad face. 😦 This was my third time and I used my right arm for the bloodwork. The previous time I almost fainted, I think I got up too quickly after the donation. On this occasion I didn’t experience any dizziness or negative effects. I ate 6 cookies and a chocolate bar afterwards. Totally worth it! 😀 The only side effect was that the next day I ran at a very slow average speed – 11 km/h.

Later that day I had the best Latin dancing lesson so far. It was the 5th lesson and everybody more or less knew what they were doing. We were actually dancing and it looked good. I also learned a “half-turn” which seemed like one of those fancy moves. I like the progress I’ve made.

Among other things, this week I hosted two German girls – Claudia and Steffi – for 3 days (via Couchsurfing). It was nice to have them in the house but I didn’t really get to know them very well. I was at work during the morning/day and they went into the city in the afternoon. So we only had several hours of quality time in the evenings. I think I should plan some activities for my couchsurfing guests.

 

Today I spent most of the day fantasizing… fantasizing about running a marathon in the Olympics. I Googled a bit and found out that a time of 2h15m would qualify me. Not a problem! All I need to do is put one foot in front of the other with an average speed of about 20 km/h. Easy-peasy!

Fueled by my naïve dreams and imagination I bought compression calf sleeves. You know, just to look a tiny bit more professional when training.

I’ll see you guys at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

My first race

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This bald guy passed me and just seconds later was hit by a falling tree branch. It hit his head or neck area but he kept on running. It was a decent chunk of wood about 5 cm in diameter. He surely got a headache from cushioning the fall of that piece of lumber. 😀

Before that I saw rain raining horizontally, which was really cool. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like that before. Today the radio said the wind gusts were up to 90 km/h with 16,000 lightning bolts. It rained 45mm in 30 minutes in several suburbs. That’s a decent storm!

Since I had already finished my first lap (10 km) I needed to pick up some speed to run a negative split. I was glad when it started to rain. I kept up my mantra “I can, I can, I can” and followed the 1:40 balloons. It actually felt a bit easier to run in these conditions because I wasn’t as hot anymore. It took only several minutes for the rain to form 15 cm deep puddles on the road. It was quite exciting because there were leaves, branches and debris flying all around.

The race track turned around and after the big puddles I lost sight of the balloons. I think they stopped running and were helping an injured runner on the street who was probably hit by a tree branch or something. There was no ambulance near them yet. So it must’ve been a very recent accident.

I felt quite bad about running past them. I told myself that other people were already there with the injured person and let’s be honest I know nothing about first aid. What could I do anyways? Yeah… I’m a selfish bastard. I guess I lost focus on what’s important. This was my first half marathon and I wanted to get a sub 100 minute finishing time. I’ll be a better person in the future.

Several minutes later I saw a man waving his arms and running towards me yelling that the race was over. Everybody should move to the finish. The Twilight half marathon was cancelled. As I jogged along with hundreds of runners I passed two ambulances. For a second I thought about what would happen to me if I needed medical attention? I’ve got no health insurance, I’d be screwed. Oh well… that’s the life of a backpacker.

I ran 5 km in 22:04, my 10K split time is not on the website but I crossed the finish at 1:08:53 and ran a total of 14-15 km (I can’t be sure on the exact distance).

What did I learn from this experience? Firstly, there’s a huge piss-line before the start of the race, everybody needs to take a leak. I didn’t expect that. I strategically positioned myself near the 1:40 balloons and passed them but around the 8th km they passed me and I just kept following them. I was going too fast too early. Some people commented on me running barefoot during and before the race. Nobody said anything bad, here are some examples: “I agree with the concept but not on bitumen” or “What are your split times?” or “Do you get blisters?” or “Wow… barefoot”. I don’t think I deserved any of that extra attention. Nor did I want it. I just wanted to run a half marathon.

Getting back home was a bit of a pain because I spent about 40 minutes in the parking building waiting in line to get out. During that time I didn’t even move an inch. Good times!

I was a bit disappointed because the race was cancelled but I probably ran a 10K personal best and got my first racing experience.

It surely was a very interesting day. I’m looking forward to my next half-marathon in Noosa on Apr 28th.

First quarter

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I know you’re all curious about my speed dating results. Well, I made 4 matches out of 20 but it’s not as good as it sounds because they were all “friendship” matches. Clearly I’m not what you’d call dating material.

This is not what I expected. I was hoping for a 20/20 score and hot girls calling me in the middle of the night and yelling “Take me now!” or “Can you be here in 10?” accompanied by an endless stream of sexts on my mobile phone. Man, my fantasy crashed and burned!

So I thought about the only thing I could do in this situation. I decided to take the advice of a self-made self-help guru who’s transformed the lives of millions of people. Ladies and gentlemen this is Jon Lajoie:

I like that quality of life increases in a straight line as you give less of a fuck. 😀 What a great concept!

Funny story about the video, I once sent this link to a French girl and the very next day she was fired. 😀 I couldn’t stop laughing once I heard about it. 😀 I’m pure evil! 😈

Change of topic. Last week I ran four personal best times (5K, 6.5K, 8K and 10K runs). I liked that. I kept telling myself “run like you mean it”, “run with purpose” and “I can, I can, I can”. The last one is from Bear Grylls’ autobiography. All that mantra really helped.

Sadly this week things are a bit different. Since I’m running a half marathon this Sunday I need to take it easy and save all my energy to kick ass during the race. Doing that is a bit harder than I thought… running slower than I could is a bit depressing. Weird! I’m hoping for a good time in my race (<100 minutes) and I know I can do it. Wish me luck!

Today is also my 25th birthday. I baked a cake (it’s a chocolate sponge, a true culinary masterpiece) and made a wish as I blew out the candles. I also received a letter (an actual snail mail letter in an envelope with a stamp and all) from the company where I had a job interview about a week ago. I wasn’t surprised when I read that a different candidate was selected for the position. Happy birthday indeed! I needed to watch the above video after I cried myself a river. I’m all good now.

Stay tuned till next time. I’ll write about my half marathon.

Speed dating

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I took the bus because I didn’t want to get stressed about finding a parking spot in the CBD. Besides you already know my parking skills are crap. 😀 I didn’t want to risk getting another “insulting” message on my windscreen.

The first girl was interesting. She had a lot of questions and just kept firing at me. The conversation was largely one way – I didn’t find out much about her but she seemed great.

That place was crowded. And LOUD! Sometimes I could barely hear/understand what the girl was saying.

I noticed that girls didn’t ask any interesting questions. They played it safe and only asked about where I was from, what I did for work, my studies… job interview stuff. Seriously, who gives a fuck about that kind of stuff? Man was I bored, so I had to interrupt the interrogation. I had several interesting questions up my sleeve. For example I asked them what superpowers they would like to have or how would they design Lady Gaga’s dress or what kind of time travelling would they like to do or if they were Taylor Swift who would be their next squeeze… things like that. Some of the answers were really funny and I had a good time.

I noticed a strange phenomenon. Once the bell rang we were all strangers again. The 4-minute date is quite magical when you think about it.

One lady was a real Ice Queen and only answered “yes” or “no”, “I don’t know” or “I’ve never thought about that”. God damn it bitch, there are no right and wrong answers, just wing it! She almost turned me into a suicide case. She was attractive… with all that make-up but she seemed to be hollow. And then she yawned right in my face. That was a big no-no. I just didn’t want to talk to her after that.

The last girl was electric. She had a lot of energy and seemed a bit funny with her gestures and fast talking. She was lovely.

It took about three hours to finish twenty 4-minute dates with several brakes in between. I was glad once the talking was done. Finally I could catch my breath and leave. It was way past bedtime (I usually wake up at 4:45 to go running).

I don’t know how “well” I did and whether I made any matches but it was a good way to spend an evening with hot single girls in their prime childbearing years. 😀

Getting lost

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My training schedule has slow long distance runs on Sundays. This means that the longest distances will be covered on Sundays and the focus is on endurance not speed. A week ago I went for my 14.5 km run. That was supposed to be the longest run up to that point in my life. I was pretty excited about that.

The problem was I wanted to spice up my running and I went on a new route. I covered the first 8-10 km as planned and then I got lost. I took a left turn way too early.

I kept running because I thought the big street I was running on would eventually connect to a street I was familiar with. That never happened. So I used my inner GPS to navigate. That too was a mistake.

I started running at 5AM so there weren’t many people outside to ask for directions. Besides I looked like a crazy person since I run in nothing but my shorts – barefoot and with no shirt. I didn’t want anyone to call the cops on me (several years ago in the US there was a woman who called the cops for much less than that).

I kept running. It felt good. I reached a park and I knew that park was about 8 km north from home because I’ve been there before. I didn’t know how to get back. So I ran some more until I gave up on listening to my inner GPS. Suddenly I heard a noise. It was a train in the distance. That was my a’ha moment. I decided to follow the railroad because I knew it would take me home, eventually.

Once I reached a trainstation I was super happy but exhausted. I knew I was only about 5 km away from home. I tried to keep running but I just couldn’t. That was the first time in my runs when I had to walk. I ran a bit more and then walked again. I’d never been this tired and thirsty and hungry. I actually considered drinking from the puddles on the street. I slowly ran the last kilometer which got me home. Boy, was I glad. The day before I made a cake and that morning I ate about ¾ of it in less than 5 minutes. Nom-nom-nom-nom.

I also stopped my stopwatch which was on my kitchen counter. The display said 3:00:12. I checked on Google Maps and found out that I ran about 31 km – more than double than I planned. I was glad I covered the distance but I was a bit worried because my knee felt a bit odd. Maybe I hurt myself. At least I knew I was able to run a half marathon.

Things were pretty normal for the rest of the day but my knee started to hurt when I walked and my legs got quite sore. This wasn’t good.

The next two days I ran according to my training schedule but my knee was still playing up. So I had to take a rest day. This was the first time I had to deviate from my training plan. I felt quite lousy about that. I felt like a loser. I was a failure.

I picked up a book – „True Spirit“ by Jessica Watson. She is the world’s youngest person who sailed solo unassisted around the globe on a yacht. What made her story so incredible is that she did it all at the tender age of 16. She sailed the seas a bit more than 3 years ago. That made me think… what was I doing at that time? Why wasn’t I doing something incredible with my life? Her story was truly inspiring.

I also watched a documentary about an Aussie bloke who went to the United States and drank nothing but juice for 60 days. He was overweight and sick and got much better after his juicing experiment. After watching the movie I did one juicing day too (thinking that this will help me recover from my running). I bought about $15-$20 worth of vegetables and fruits to juice that day. I didn’t really feel much better but I thought it was interesting to try.

Things got better after my rest day and today I ran 16 km on a new route without getting lost or injured. I’m so proud of myself :D. Exactly 2 weeks until my first half marathon (21.1 km). I’m looking forward to it!

Parking skills

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Yesterday I was in a hurry to get to my latin dancing class. They moved my class to Wednesday because the Friday classes didn’t attract enough people. The parking lot was full and I left my car on a street.

The studios were packed with wannabe dancers. I claimed my territory on the floor and started mimicking other people’s movements. Similar to last time we switched partners every couple of minutes and generally I enjoyed the lesson. We learned turns. Sure, I got a bit dizzy after a while but it was funny.

It’s interesting to change partners because every girl/woman is different. Some of them dance really close to you, others keep a huge distance. Some are short, some are almost my height. Some are terrible dancers and some are very focused. And they all react different when they mess up. They apologize, they laugh, they pretend nothing happened. It’s very entertaining.

I do struggle with one thing. Where am I supposed to look when I’m dancing with someone? I cant look them into the eyes because they’re complete strangers and it feels awkward. Staring is creepy! It’s a bit easier when you’re conversing. I need to polish my small-talk skills.

I remember Helen asked us what’s the place a dancer is not allowed to look at? I thought to myself „BREASTS! Don’t stare at their BREASTS!“ :D. But I kept my mouth shut, this ain’t highschool. The right answer was feet. You’re not supposed to look at your feet when you’re dancing.

After class I walked to my car and noticed a piece of cardboard on my windscreen. First I thought it was a huge parking ticket but it turned out to be a message from some guy commenting on my awesome parking skills: „Bro you parked over our driveway. What a dick move. Don’t do it again! Your mother was a hamster!“. I just laughed. It made my day!

 

Good luck with your parking,

Son of a hamster