Music in the Air

Last week 16 - 22nd Feb

Mon 9.5k - 50:45 (5:20 HR 131) - Recovery Run
Tue 13k - 60:45 (4:40 HR 146)
Wed 18k - 88:25 (4:54 HR 142)
Thu 3k - 28:42 - Recovery Run
Fri 18k - 86:57 (4:49 HR 146)
Sat - Rest
Sun 25k - 2:09:25 (5:10 HR 143)

This week I made a big effort to keep my recovery runs slow. Thursday's was a little unplanned as I forgot to bring a singlet to work to run in. So I went home through peak hour traffic which took me about 30 minutes longer than my normal trip. I have been trying to encourage Kewell to get out and do some running so he will be fit for the upcoming football season, so my unexpected arrival home gave us the opportunity to go out together. He was less than pleased but I was rather looking forward to running with him. So what was going to be a slow run turned into a game of cat and mouse. Somehow he was always managed to be about 10 metres behind me. No matter how slow I went he never caught up. If I stopped he stopped. If I jogged on the spot he did the same.

My other runs showed good progress. My long run on Sunday over my 25k course was the first time I have ever negative split this course (65:20 , 64:05). That is quite a feat as it is generally downhill out and uphill back. I think that it helped there was a slight head wind back which seemed to make it just a little cooler on the way back. But with Relative Humidity in the 85 - 90% zone it is still too humid for my liking.

Came across this video from the early 60s the other day. I know Tesso & JD will love it. Hope you do too.

Jive Talking

It has been two weeks since my last post.

The previous week end, I had a very late night on the Saturday because it was my eldest daughter's 18th Birthday Party and even though I had scheduled my run for Sunday evening when the time came I had a headache and didn't go for the run. So only 71.5k that week.

The next day it was a stinking hot day and I gave the run a miss. But the rest of the week was very solid including a 89:43 18k at around 75% Max Heart Rate. All up 87k for the week.

Tonight I was doing a recovery run and bumped into Julez on the Teneriffe Reach and ran with her and her friend for a few Ks and had a pleasant chat about music. For once I could test out my pacing for a recovery run by using the "Can You Talk Easily" indicator. I think I passed .

Back for another Year

It has been too long, I know.

With the holidays and other things, updating the blog just didn't seem to happen with my limited time and access to the computer.

I finished off 2008 really well with a best ever 418.6k in December taking me to 3,550k for the year.

January had a slight hiccup with a niggle in my right leg. I could not quite work out exactly where the pain was coming from, but I took it easy for a week and have been slowly building up again. So it was only 253k for January but back to 97k last week.

The plan at this stage is to continue base building in February and then start introducing some faster running when the weather gets a little cooler with the focus on the Gold Coast Marathon in July.

Along the way I will have a couple of test races in the Twilight Half in April and Doomben Half in June.

One of the activities that has been consuming more and more of my non-running time is compiling music mixes. After 30 years of making them just for my own listening pleasure , I made one specifically for posting to Art of The Mix.

It was called "Tower of Robert Song". (Download here.)

I have also been doing a lot of these mixes with Johnny Dark and we are currently on our 9th.

Our latest was Aliens Crash Into Unsuspecting Music Mix. (Download here).

However much I might be proud of those artistic efforts, just as in running, you always have to have something motivating you to go that extra mile and produce something of lasting quality, like this video ...

Now seriously, I was rather pleasantly surprised to find out recently that the Audio archivist Graeme Cousel who was recently awarded Guinee's highest honour, the Palme Académique en Or, for his tireless work on the Syliphone Archive is from Melbourne. His story of his work is here. The many compilations released from his work are on the Stern's Label and are all highly recommended.