Rock bottom

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Some of my friends might remember what I said back in uni. I used to say that exercising was harmful for your health. I knew so many people who were always complaining that they can’t run or cycle or play basketball because of their knee or some other injury.  Now I’m one of those people… but I’ll get better and will be smarter about training in the future. It’s only harmful if you overtrain or go too far too soon.
I also thought that the gym was for the weak. I still think so. Hey, think about it. If you were as strong as Hercules you wouldn’t need a gym. You’d be done! Finished! 😀
I don’t know what I’ll do this Saturday. Maybe I’ll do the half marathon instead or the 11km or the 6km and just walk it. It’s rather disappointing – I’ve been looking forward to the marathon for so long.
At least it’s a good life lesson – things don’t always go as planned. You get hurt. And life can suck. Maybe I’m one of those people who have really bad luck. I think if it was raining pussy I’d still get hit in the head with a dick.
I’ve been in similar situations before. Hey, we’ve all been there… rock bottom… In my case there’s rock bottom, 50 feet of crap and THEN there’s me. Hello! Yes, you’re smiling because you can relate to that. 😀

rock bottom
In retrospect all the bad stuff was just a bump in the road. Things got better, they always have and why would this time be different. I’m looking forward to the next day, marathon or not. Carpe diem!

Ivar the PepTalkGuy

Too dumb

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I put my hands together and extended my index fingers – just like the hypnotizer instructed. Then he said that the fingers want to stay together but he challenged us to try to separate them. As I did that the fingers magically came closer and closer and closer until they touched. The man said that if my fingers came together I was a good subject for being hypnotized. Then he asked volunteers to come on the stage and my hand was waving fanatically.

People who are stupid can’t be hypnotized. That’s what I was told. Or maybe it was a joke? I will never know.

About 12 people were sitting on chairs on the stage and we were all hypnotized – except that it didn’t work on me. I kept my eyes shut and tried to relax and focus on his words but that had no effect on me.

Other than that the show was funny. He got people to dance like Elvis or like a chicken. People were laying square eggs, looking for their imaginary dog… He transformed several men into supermodels on a catwalk and got them to do lap dances for people in the audience. The guy sitting next to me was turned into a 4 year old girl who found his mother’s make-up kit and played dress up. I saw all that and it was real. They weren’t pretending.

Cool stuff. Thank you Princess for the tickets!

After the show I walked slowly back to Prince Charming’s car because my back was still hurting but at least I could walk (massive improvement).

I’ve done no running in the last 7 days. The most I could do is 3 seconds of jogging in one place. There’s no way I’ll be running a marathon this Saturday – that miracle recovery thing isn’t happening.

Ivar the Turtle

The steps that broke the camel’s back

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I’m sure you’ve all heard of “the law of attraction”. There was a book about it and also a movie – The Secret. The law basically says that everything which happens to you is because you attracted it.

Well… yesterday I went running. It was supposed to be an easy 26 km run. In my book that’s a short distance for a long run. After about 15 km my lower back started hurting. I ignored the pain since it was unusual. It got pretty bad but I kept telling myself that the fastest way home would be to continue running.

After I got home and took a shower I wasn’t able to walk anymore. I couldn’t put my bodyweight into my right leg. And today wasn’t much different from yesterday.

It’s pathetic.

The law of attraction says that this is what I wanted and therefore the Universe replied. Thank you Universe! This is exactly what I needed just 12 days before my marathon. How can I ever repay you?

Okay, okay. I don’t really blame “the Universe”. I did this to myself – I knew it wasn’t a good idea to keep going but I just wanted to finish the distance because I was supposed to run it on Sunday, not Monday. On Sunday the Lizard was pretty convincing. I heard things like “hey, you’re tapering, it’s cold outside and it’s raining, you don’t want to risk getting sick  just two weeks before your marathon” and I gave in. On Monday I felt bad about it. Maybe my subconsciousness was punishing me for my lack of discipline? I ran because I thought I deserved to be in pain?

I’m a bit worried whether my back will let me race in Uluru at all. Soooo… things aren’t going too well right now but I’m hoping for a miracle recovery. Wish me luck!

Oh and… my vegan week was a success and it wasn’t as difficult as I imagined to change my diet. I’m continuing the vegan thing for a whole month.

Ivar the Cripple

A cake with a surprise

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After my baking project I was sure I’d never bake anything again, until I was invited to a birthday party. My little social group was discussing gift ideas and I suggested a prank – an exploding birthday cake.

Everybody was in agreement that this was a good idea… unfortunately nobody volunteered for the task. Since I had a bit of experience with cakes I decided to take up this challenge.

I Googled some instructions and watched several YouTube videos to get an idea how the explosive cake was made. Basically you’ve got a tray and an inflated balloon is taped onto it. The whole thing is covered with some whipped cream and decorated like a normal birthday cake. As the birthday girl/boy cuts the cake open the balloon pops and the whipped cream explodes everywhere. That’s the gist of it.

I was making the first cake but I wasn’t gentle enough with the balloon. It popped as I was trying to tape it to the serving dish. Fail!

The second time I was a bit more careful, I also decided to put more air into the balloon to reach its maximum explosive potential. This time I even covered the thing with whipped cream. The problem was that decoration has never been one of my strongest skills – it looked rather gross and ugly. The birthday boy would have never believed it was a real cake.

After careful consideration I decided to throw the fugly thing into the trashcan. I knew I could do better.

Soon afterwards, a masterpiece was in the making. Cake 2.0 was a huge improvement – a bit smaller but much more realistic than its predecessor. I was confident it would paint half the restaurant white with whipped cream.

The next day we all got together for the birthday dinner… everybody had fun blah blah blah. We got the staff to serve the cake and everybody was singing “Happy birthday!” Here’s what happened:

Uhm… things didn’t exactly go as planned, but it was hilarious. Everybody was expecting a big bang but all it did was deflate. 😀 A failure can still be a great success!!!

On a different note, I decided to do a vegan week starting today. If it’s not too difficult I might continue longer. Here’s pretty much why I’m doing it:

Vegetarianism

Ivar

Power of Cake

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It was a summer evening, nothing special about the day. She bought all the ingredients and said that she’ll make the lemon tart. So I told Emily that she better get on it because I expect to have some cake for breakfast. I went to dreamland with a happy smile on my face.

The morning dawned and I went looking for some cake but there was none to be found. She didn’t make it. Damn her and her empty promises! I will never trust Australians. All they do is raise your hopes and expectations but when push comes to shove they never deliver.

I decided to take matters into my own hands. I don’t need her! I can make my own bloody cake.

That’s how it started. I made my first lemon tart from a cookbook and it was a great success.

Soon afterwards I decided that I will make every recipe from that book. It’s another item on my bucket list. I’ve tried other cookbooks but some recipes ended up costing me about $50 each and were too fancy for my taste. This book was different.

Fast forward about 5 months… today I made the last recipe from Merle’s Kitchen by Merle Parrish. I’ve made cakes, puddings, slices, desserts, sponges, cupcakes, scones, bread loafs, biscuits and cookies – a total of 103 recipes. Most of them turned out really well but I had several epic failures too.

Every time I call my mom she asks me about my diet. I always tell her that I eat cakes and such. It’s also the food which has fueled my marathon training.

Mmm… carbs!!!

About a week ago I ran 42.2 km on one of my training runs and added another 80 km in the next 7 days. That’s the power of cake!

Ivar the MasterChef

Here are the photos:

 

Going the extra miles

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My arms got tired and I just wanted to give up but Goldilocks and Shrek were below watching my every move. The slope wasn’t too big but it was challenging. All I wanted to do was let go and have Goldilocks lower me down to the ground but she didn’t. So I kept trying until I figured out what to hold on to and was able to climb to the top of the wall.

She had faith in me or the more likely explanation is that she just enjoyed watching me struggle. It felt great to reach the top. The rest of the day we climbed other walls, had fun doing it and got a decent upper body workout in the process.

Today I was planning to run a 32 km. It was part of my marathon training. The weather was great and I felt really good, so after my first 16 km run I thought that I should try running a full marathon i.e 42.2 km. 10K’s here or there didn’t really matter, I thought.

GoTheExtraMile

I thought wrong. The last 10 km were pretty difficult and I slowed down a fair bit. I wasn’t able to pace myself correctly for the whole distance. I was pretty happy once I finished. After all, this is a personal best for me – longest run so far. It took me 4h and 5min to finish.

It would be great if I was able to run a marathon faster than 3:08 – like my aunt did – but it seems that goal is too ambitious to achieve in 7 weeks. At least I know that I will finish the Uluru marathon. Today’s run gave me a decent confidence boost which I badly needed.

The thing is… for several weeks I’ve been having trouble making new personal best times and I’ve been taking a bunch of days off from running because of various pains in my legs. I was starting to doubt myself and after today’s run…

Life.

Is.

Good.

Again.

Part of my motivation was probably from Goldilocks. Yesterday she pushed me to try harder when I wanted to give up climbing that wall. I remembered how good it felt to reach the top. Today I wanted to feel that way again and I pushed myself a bit harder. It was difficult to wipe that smile off my face during my cool down walk. I really was enjoying that moment. Success!

Ivar

New tricks and my second half marathon

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The look in her eyes was pure horror. She laughed her way through the solo skydive but two days ago she was likened to a shaky leaf. Princess probably thought I’d drop and break her. Her concerns were valid since I’m hardly the strongest person on the block.

Picking up chicks was the easy part, lifting them a whole other matter. I was really glad to participate in the lifts and tricks workshop. The fancy moves we learned – backbends, between legs lifts, high lifts and the dirty dancing lift – are the very reason why I started Latin dancing.

It was very entertaining too! We had a bit too much fun as one of the instructors pointed out. 😀

The next day I was pretty sore because I’ve never really done any upper body training. It was good to practice the movements again during the social dancing night. I sure hope we made others look bad with our new bag of tricks. 😀

Dirty dancing lift

No dancing today. I had an early 5 AM start to get myself to a half marathon race (21.1 km). Not a big event though – I think about 400 people participated. As always, I ran barefoot.

My goal was to follow the 1:30 pacer and make a new personal best. Everything was going well until about the 6th km. That’s when I managed to cut my foot on a rock or something. The injury was near my big toe. That was the end of my good speed and I just focused on finishing the race no matter the time.

I was run-limping for most of the next 15 km. It sucked to see so many people pass me but it felt great to cross the finish line. I shot a big V with my arms for the finishing photo. As I crossed the line the voice from the speakers said my name and commented “he’s got the right attitude finishing with style, a barefoot runner”. That was so cool! Later, a bunch of people asked me questions about barefoot running, they were all so interested or just wanted to check whether I was fair dinkum or not.

All I know is that it took me about 1:45-2:00 to finish. No new personal best but I was pretty happy to complete my second half marathon. I hope to find out the official results tomorrow.

Ivar

The trolls at work

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A piece of me died when I stepped into the same building again.  Last year I worked on the NAPLAN project too and it was super boring. 1.5 years in Australia and I’m still in the same place… I’m a lot like Ted Mosby I think.

career and lovelife

I went to the kitchen area and as I scanned the newbies in the kitchen trying to decide where to sit, I suddenly saw this gorgeous woman. Being good mannered and all I moved in to keep her company… Aaah, she’s from Brazil. I should go there instead of New Zealand.

About two minutes into our conversation I found out she was married. The blood moved back into my brain and I didn’t feel like talking to her anymore. The memories of that dark and grim workplace started to came back to me. I sighed in utter despair. Oh, the things you have to do for money…

The saddest part was that I wasn’t the only one doing that project again. It really seems I’m one of those people who lead quiet lives of desperation.

We did a bit of super boring work, as expected. But then I got creative. I can’t help but let my mind wander when not doing anything interesting. So, there I was working with about 100 people in the same room typing stuff into a computer imagining that everybody else was a troll, just like in the pic and =3 video below. 😀

troll2

The trolls turned my frown upside down and time started to pass faster. The good thing is that I’ll be working there only for one month and I don’t have any super early starts anymore – no more 4AM shifts. I can go to work like a normal person again. It’s also closer to home so I might cycle or run to work to get a bit more exercise into my marathon training.

At the end of the day things weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. Besides I might make some new friends too. Oh and did I mention… the female to male ratio is awesome! There are about 20 women/girls per man. Sweet!

Ivar

It almost happened today

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I was really worried for a sec because I wasn’t prepared.  When the police car behind me started its siren I didn’t know what to do. Should I pull over or let him pass or what was I supposed to do? A moment later I realized that I didn’t have the goods with me. Damn it! Stupid, stupid, stupid… I was kicking myself.

I’ve been fantasizing about this moment for several months… well, since I saw Gabriel Iglesias’ video “Making Cops Laugh”.

That dark night, pulling over and looking into the mirror, watching the policeman approach. Then scrolling down the window and hearing the classic words “Do you know why I pulled you over?”  With a huge smile I’d say “Yes of course, officer. It’s because you can smell the donuts!!!” and I’d hand him the box of donuts I’ve been keeping in my car for just this occasion. 😀 I bet this trick would get me out of a ticket!

donuts

Sadly none of that happened because the police car passed me and went to save a frightened kitten from a tree. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to buy some donuts and keep them in an air-tight container somewhere in my car. I need to be prepared. Hmm… I wonder how long will the donuts stay edible?

I think Australia is getting the best of me… I’m backwards – I actually want to be pulled over. 

Better luck next time,

Ivar

The big one

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Some of you might not know why I’m running this much. It’s because I plan to run the Australian Outback Marathon around Ayres Rock (that big rock in the center of Australia).

Ayers Rock

It’s a rather expensive race. In fact it’s the most expensive stunt I’ve done in my life. I’ve booked my flights and accommodation and it cost me a bit more than $2000. Totally worth it! Hey, you can’t run a marathon in the desert every day. I’m looking forward to the experience. I’ve got 8 more weeks to train (and recover) for it.

You know what I like about the marathon? I like that it’s such a big commitment. All the other stuff I’ve done is just something I can do in exchange for money. Take skydiving for example – all you need to do is pay for the thing and you can do it the very next day.

The marathon is a completely different beast. You can’t pay your way to the finish line. It takes a lot of work: about 1400 km of running, stretching, lots of yoga and eating. The last part is surprisingly difficult because I keep losing weight even though I’ve never eaten this much in my life as I do right now. It’s also tough to sit on your butt all day when you’re injured. The mental side of running is the hardest – the Lizard can be a real bitch sometimes.

Something tells me it’s going to be the best feeling ever to cross that finish line. That’s what motivates me. That’s what keeps me going.

Ivar