Halloween

So I'm a week late, it takes me that much time to download photos from my phone!

For years I've seen pictures of cool carved pumpkins on US blogs & always wanted to try it. This year for the first time, the large orange pumpkins were available in supermarkets here.

So last Saturday I acquired a pumpkin and the Fig child & I got started with the carving. Scooping out all the seeds & innards was messym, but the actual carving was easy & fun. We're very happy with our first time efforts :-).

The Imp's cub pack had a halloween themed night Monday & they were requested to come in costume. Imp borrowed her brother's skeleton suit, and I added the makeup. It was meant to be skull makeup, but ended up more zombie like. Imp won a prize for best costume - some of the others had the same skeleton suit, but she was the only one with face paint.

First run in a week

My normal running track - around the local cemetary

After a week of laziness I went out for a run this morning. Beautiful weather - sun had just come up, it was about 15 deg C, no wind or rain.

Run details:
Total distance: 3.21 km
Total time: 28:24 min

But I know I walked for 6 minutes, for 0.57 km as a warmup & stretched for 3 minutes, so:
Run distance: 2.64 km
Run time: 19:24 mins

A very bored looking angel

Thought I'd add some pictures of where I usually run. I normally walk up the road to warmup, until I get to a convenient lightpost to stretch against. Then I run back to the cemetary & run on the tracks around there. Sometimes I'll also go on the bush tracks that go out from the cemetary. But only if it hasn't been raining, and if it's not dark - those tracks can get slippery.

The surrounding bush

The Triathlon

Sunday 30 October 2011
Penrith Regatta Centre - Tri Shave Womens Triathlon Festival

My check in opened at 7:50, so we were on the road down to Penrith by around 7:20 am. I was pretty nervous because I had no idea what I was doing or what to expect. And because I had no idea if I would be able to do this.

on the pontoon, waiting to start

They were great at the check in, explained everything that in the kit to me, like where to put the bike sticker, which leg to put the timing chip on, how to attach the bib & which way it was to go in different legs, where to put my bike, and other stuff like that.

The kit included a swim cap, we were colour coded into ages groups inside our event. So I was in the try-a-tri event, in the pink cap age group.

I've marked me with an arrow

Starting leg was the 150m swim. We had to leave from the pontoon & wade over to line up between the blue boat & shore. Water temperature in the lake was 21.5 deg C.

The swim leg was the one I was most worried about - the bike track at the regatta centre is easy & I knew I could walk in the run leg if necessary. But the swim leg had to be swum! But I knew I'd swum the distance at the pool, so I thought I'd be okay. And once I was actually in the water & swimming, it was okay.

Leaving the lake at the end of swimming
My eldest daughter (The Imp) is cheering me on

A woman I'd met at at geocaching event the week before was also at the triathlon & she gave me some advice about getting out of the lake - don't try to stand up until your fingers are firmly on the mat on the ramp. If you stand earlier, you are over weed, it's slippery & harder to get out! Very good advice.

After leaving the lake we had to run to the transition area to get our bikes. I don't have any pictures of the cycling leg, apparently I went past faster than expected and there was no time to get a shot. I was on a borrowed bike for the day, on a beautiful fast lightweight bike fitted with slick racing tyres.

first half of the running leg

My transitions were a bit slow, that's something I'll have to improve at next time I do a tri. My first one was especially slow, getting my shoes on. It didn't help that it started raining when we were swimming & my towel was getting wet.

But once I was out, the cycling leg was great. As I said earlier, the track at the regatta centre is an easy course. It's basically flat, with only one small hill, arond the lake. Once I got used to my borrowed bike, I picked up speed & passed a few people.

second half of the run

My event only had to do one lap of the track, that's 5 km, before heading back to transition & on to the running.

The running leg was one lap out & back at the northern edge of the lake, in front of the grandstand.

I'd thought I might be feeling tired by the time I got to the running stage, but I guess adreneline had kicked in because I felt great on the run. And I ran the entire 1.5 km.

Almost finished

After we'd ran out & back, the running run curved back almost towards the transition area, then looped around to go up a small incline to the finishing line. A slightly nasty touch to have to run up a slope at the very end :-).

Crossing the finish line

My times:
swim - 150 m - 5:38 minutes
cycle - 5 km - 18:29 minutes (I think the cycle time includes both transititon times)
run - 1.5 km - 8:57 minutes
Total time - 33:05 minutes.

How did I feel after doing it? Very proud of myself for being able to do it. And stronger & faster than I thought I'd be.

Will I do it again? You bet! It was a great morning & I felt fantastic being out there doing it. Everyone was friendly, and encouraging of each other, it was a really great atmosphere out there.

And maybe at this event next year, I'll have my Imp girl to keep me company, because she now seems keen to do it herself.

It's today

I'll be leaving for it soon.

Birdcages - Forgotten Songs

I was walking through Angel Place in the Sydney CBD on Tuesday & realised I could hear bird noises. Lots of bird noises. So I looked around & saw that there were all of these bird cages hanging above the alley, strung between the buildings. The bird calls were from loudspeakers on the sides of the buildings.

I only had my phone on me and the battery was dying, so I could only get this one poor quality photo. But if you look at this blog post, there are some really good pictures of the alley. And some more on flickr here and here .

It apparently was a temporary art installation to end January 2010, but was brought back this year as a permanent installation (more details on this site). The paving mentioned in the linked article was being laid the day I was there, with the names of the birds which once would have lived in the area. An unexpectedly beautiful spot.

I was actually in the alley because there's a geocache there, but couldn't look for it due to the work being done on the paving. Second time I haven't been able to find that one.

A baby shower idea

I've been away for a bit, school holidays & all that. Still haven't unpacked everything, just emptied all of the dirty clothes into the laundry. Don't want to face google reader, it says I have 1000+ feeds waiting for me!

Got back in good time to go to a baby shower on Sunday for a friend who is currently 33 weeks pregnant.

One of the 'games' we played at the shower was really cool, so I thought I'd share the idea.

A pile of singlets was passed around, in a few colours & sizes, together with a bag of permanent markers. We each chose a singlet and got instructed to draw something on the singlet for the baby and sign our names.

We all got to bemoan our lack of artistic ability, had some fun & the mum-to-be got a unique set of singlets for the baby.

I drew a lion on my singlet. I had no idea what to do, but I dropped down the floor with a piece of paper & a pen intending to start sketching, just to see if I could think of something. And the floor rug had all of these cute cartoony style animals on it, including this really cute lion. So I copied it. From memory there was also a plane, a boat, a tropical beach scene, an 'I heart U' and a Jackson Pollack inspired design.

A tri day

Saturday's training - ran in the morning, did 10 laps at the pool while the kids had swimming lessons & did a 15 km ride in the afternoon.

And nothing since :-(.

William Shatner - "Rocket Man"

Triathlon training start

I've been pretty slack with training lately, I've had other issues to deal with and haven't been running much. But now that I've committed to doing the triathlon, I've realised that I really need to get serious about getting ready.

Results so far - a 200m swim on Saturday morning, a bike ride yesterday for a couple of kilometres on a flat fire trail and a run this morning. Okay, serious will have to start soon.

For the run I tried out the Nike+ app on my iphone, so I have a record of how I went: 3.54 km, taking 33:48 minutes. And a nice map of my run.

How to Find Inspiration

Have to do it now

Today I registered for a (very short distance) triathlon, a beginner level one being run by Triathlon NSW. A friend suggested I should join her in this ages ago, and now I've committed myself to doing it.

If anyone wants to join me, it's the last weekend in October, at the Penrith Regatta Centre.

Charles Darwin Walk

Not sure what has been stopping me from actually adding some content to my new blog, but I just seem to get a blank every time I sit down to write something. So today I'm forcing myself to post something, even if it is just photos from a recent geocaching walk.

I did this one in late August, it's the cache GCKM2P - Monkey Puzzle. I had to be in Wentworth Falls that morning with a friend, and after we'd finished our business we decided to go caching.

My friend had done this one previously, but agreed to do it again with me.

This one is a multi-cache, with the first waypoint at the start of the Charles Darwin Walk, at the back of Wilson Park, on Falls Road.

The track follows Jamison Creek down to the top of the Falls.

The walk is (obviously) named after Charles Darwin, who visited the area in 1836, towards the end of his voyage as a naturalist on HMS Beagle.

We had a lot of rain over winter, so the creek was running high.

It rained slightly on our walk, but not enough to worry us. But that could have been the reason that there weren't too many other people out on the track.

We reached the second waypoint just before we got to the viewing area above the Falls (with views over Jamison Valley). Luckily my friend had done this one before, because he recognised that the signs I needed to calculate GZ had been replaced with newer signs and that it was now impossible to work out the final coordinates.

Even better, he had the phone number for the cache owner, and called him to tell him the bad news about the signs and to ask for the final coordinates. The cache owner gave us the coordinates we needed, then offered to meet us at GZ as he lived nearby.

GZ was back up the track, on the other side of the creek. Apparently there is normally a spot where you can get across & keep your feet dry. But as I noted before, it's been raining a lot lately and the creek level is up. We got the crossing point. My friend is tall enough that he jumped over. I didn't think I'd make it without falling backwards & getting completely soaked. So I tested out my waterproof boots and just walked across the creek. Here's the bleeding obvious - waterproof boots aren't waterproof once the water goes over the top of the boots!

The CO and my friend chatted while I searched for the cache, and after stumbling around blindly for a bit, I eventually managed to find it, and became the first person to log this cache in over a year. Then the CO generously offered to drive us back to the car, saving me from having to wade through the creek again.

New blog

It seemed like a good time with things that have been happening here to make a new start with a new blog. This one will be similar in many ways to the old one, but there will be a few differences.

I'll still be posting details of craft projects, cooking & gardening. There will be details of geocaching trips. Probably won't be too many details of my private life, at least not at first.