Knitters: Which hypothetical name for a LYS do you like best? Newtown Stitchery / The Newtown Nook / The Granny Square / Champion on King
@redambition Ahhh, but imagine the merchandising opportunities! T-shirts that say: “I heart COK…” HAHAHAHA! 🙂
Just completed a 4.65 km run with @runkeeper, check it out http://bit.ly/PrT52 #RunKeeper
@witty_knitter I don’t know if it would be 100% knitting just yet…
Just completed a 14.15 km run with @runkeeper, check it out http://bit.ly/1kUwYs #RunKeeper
Can’t find Snook. No cell signal. Wandering and sweaty! #city2surf
Found Snook. Trying to find other MBA teammates. Sitting behind Accenture tent at south end… #city2surf
@Opheli8 So far only Paul J. I saw Venks at 5km mark but no sign since. And Sven is MIA.
Me and Paul J after the race.Paul kicked my butt! We never did find Venks or Sven. #city2surf http://twitpic.com/d8kl7
@coach_chris First half great, second half not so great. (Stitch, cramping.) Still finished in about 110. Home now and showered. 🙂
@venks79 Well done! Your pace was much more consistent than mine.
@devvyleys Outdoor running is so hard. Have to build up slowly. Try the Couch to 5K when you’re ready. I’m sure you can do it!
Crap. I took about 10 photos during the #city2surf, but crappy 3G coverage meant only 2 got uploaded to @runkeeper. Any way to resubmit?
@bennymarsh Did you remember to turn off wifi? I only get bad gps when I forget. My #city2surf distance was spot on.
Now the reward: Full. Body. Massage.
We are like 5 minutes into Transformers: The Movie (the animated one), and I’m completely lost. How does a giant robot turn into a tiny gun?
@sharre For latchhook? Very, very difficult. M&S used to carry it, but supplier stopped making it. No idea where to get it these days.
Insecticons? There is obviously a whole mythology here that I’m missing out on.
“There’s a girl Autobot? What does she turn into? If it’s, like, a goddamn hair brush, I’M GONNA VOMIT.”
@shanea I just want to know why the girl Transformer sucks so bad. She hasn’t transformed yet!
@randomknits Wow! Ten points to @gilmae for originality and plating. But how did it taste?
@shanea It was time for Snook’s WoW raiding session, so I took advantage and switched off Transformers. (Nerdiest. Sentence. Ever.)
WICKET! Man, I might actually get to see the Poms lose before bedtime. (This is MUCH better than Transformers already.)
Any of you have Microsoft Works? Trying to open a .wps document…
@gilmae Tried it. OO wanted me to choose from 100+ non-alphabetised filter formats, none of which matched. But NeoOffice opened it 1st try!
Thanks, everybody. I got it open. OO didn’t like it, but NeoOffice opened it just fine…
@Opheli8 I don’t do sewing, really. Hm. Wonder if I could knit one.
My Race Report for the 2009 City 2 Surf is up, complete with lots of pics from the course: http://bit.ly/j75V1
Just read the phrase “And you’re only getting older” in email from @carbolicious. THANKS, SIS. Great way to start my Monday…
Ran the 14km City 2 Surf for the fourth time. Finished in about 110 minutes, which wasn’t a personal best but was pretty good considering this wasn’t my goal race. This was just training for my half-marathon in six weeks time…
My Race Report from the 2009 City 2 Surf… with lots of bad photos from the actual course!
Today was the day of my fourth running of the 14km City2Surf… and my first without the Snook! He said that our run last year “nearly killed him,” and he hadn’t done any training this year. So I was on my own. (Technically there were three guys from my company running, including my buddy Paul here that I met up with afterwards.) I headed over to the Blue start on College Street this morning at 9am, knowing that it would take ages to get started. The crowd was a record 75,000 runners, and the weather was gorgeous and sunny. I told myself over and over that this was just a training run, that I wasn’t going for any specific time. I set RunKeeper to intervals of 5:00 running and 1:00 walking. Our group finally crossed the starting line at 9:28am. We were off!
My enforced walk-breaks worked well for the first half, and I tried to take a photo during most of them. (Unfortunately they didn’t all sync to the map, but you can see them above. Optus’s network failed bigtime.) My pace for the first half was fantastic, even with the walking. Oddly enough, I actually ran into my teammate Venks around the 5km mark! I can’t believe out of 75,000 people, I ran into one of the few I knew. Venks was taking a break himself, so I left him behind when RunKeeper told me to speed up again. Soon we were at the hill… and that’s when it started sucking. I got a stitch/cramp in my side that just would not budge. I took an extra walk break, taking exaggerated breaths to try to stretch it out. I ended up walking most of the hill, and my pace just wasn’t the same after that. No matter, I told myself. It was just a training run! I tried to enjoy it. At 11.5km I stopped for a second to send the Snook an SMS telling him I was getting close. I ended up crossing the finish line (hunched over, fighting the stitch) at 111 minutes, which is about 5 minutes slower than we did last year. It’s okay. It was good just to be out there with everybody else.
I was thinking about why I love this event. I think it’s because it reminds me that you can’t judge a person’s athletic ability by their shape, and you’re really only out there competing against yourself. I was passed by people that I wouldn’t think could run 2km, much less 14km. And because of how many people there are and how staggered the starts are, there’s no point in comparing yourself to anybody else on the road. We’re all running our own races. It’s the great equalizer.
Anyway, the end of the race was madness. I couldn’t find the meeting point where my teammates were supposed to congregate, and I nearly couldn’t find the Snook. (Optus and Vodafone SUCKED.) Eventually we met up with Paul, who’d already had a shower and change of clothes! Then the three of us joined a queue for the buses and made our way back to the city. I had a long hot shower and a hot lunch before heading over to Broadway for a much-needed full body massage. Ahhh, *bliss*.
More Guild Success
We had another highly successful and FUN Inner City Guild meeting yesterday. Three more people signed up, which officially puts us at 51 financial members. That’s crazy! We have to be getting close to the biggest group. We’ve decided to make our “Learn to Knit” workshops a regular monthly occurrence, and I’m thrilled that RoseRed has put up her hand as Workshop Coordinator. Things are going really well…
ARGH. Halfway to city and just realized I left half the crap I printed out for Guild meeting at home. Will have to muddle through.
Brilliant Guild meeting! 3 new members, approval for workshop plans, great show & tell. Lovely tea from @WittyKnitter and Sandra too!
Felt a bit tired so curled up on the couch to “rest my eyes.” Woke up three hours later.
@TimBags I was hoping it was going to be shaped like a racecar from your comment. That would’ve been cool.
Snook is prepping side dishes to go with his lovely roast lamb. No carb-loading for me for #city2surf; trying to keep to my usual routine.
Can’t believe folks are lining up for #city2surf already. I just got up! One of the perks of living close to the city, I guess.
On the bus to #city2surf starting line. Have to remember this is NOT my goal race. Just a training run. Just a training run…
View towards starting line down College St. 75K runners in 2008 #city2surf http://twitpic.com/d7l70
Made it to portaloos. Trying to stay warm before start. Won’t be tweeting during race, but photos will be up right after. #city2surf
Me and my new buddy Steven waiting to start. Any second now. #city2surf http://twitpic.com/d7npb http://bit.ly/Nn1Up
Confession: I didn’t even realise that Twitter was down.
Just blogged a review of new #runkeeper release that supports geotagging photos doing your workout: http://bit.ly/1mb1T
Just how I like to spend my lunch break – sitting in the bank. It’s time to fix account name typo though. I am NOT married to the SMOOK.
For future reference: ANZ Phone Help – useless. Staff at Broadway – useless. Sunil at George St branch – only helpful person in whole co!
Official photos of me from last weekend’s Bay Run: http://bit.ly/TZlBn
@Ezzles Hooray! Congratulations… Where’s the job??
Ahem. Inner City group of Knitters Guild is up to 48(!) members, no doubt due to my brilliant (and modest) leadership skillz.
Trying to work up the willpower to get out of my warm bed and walk over to the Eveleigh Farmers’ Market.
Just back from Eveleigh Markets. Propose new economic indicator: how many trendy small dogs are wearing clothes at an Inner West event.
@coach_chris I’ll probably just be getting to Heartbreak Hill. EEP! (Be sure to Twitter afterwards. Maybe we can meet up!)
I really don’t understand the fear of nationalised health care. This American frickin’ LOVED both England’s NHS and Australia’s Medicare. They’re not perfect, but it’s nice not to worry about getting sick and going bankrupt (like people I know back in the States have done).
Looks like the official photos from the Bay Run are up! There are four of me, all taken as I was coming in to the finish.
 
 
The new highly-anticipated (by me, anyway) release of RunKeeper finally got approved yesterday. It’s got some nice improvements with real-time mapping and iPod playlist integration, but the killer feature for me is the ability to take photos and have them geotagged along the route. I thought it would be super cool to do it on Sunday during each of my walk breaks along the City2Surf. So I went out for a run this morning just to test it out.
I did notice some weirdness at first, mostly regarding the pace calculation and voice feedback. (My pace showed up as 0 for the first 10 minutes or so.) The time and distance were correct though, so I wasn’t too worried about the pace (which eventually came good). Posting a “status” message is pretty easy, akin to sending a tweet really. There’s a word balloon that you type in, and you can click the little photo icon to take a picture. I only had two problems with it. First, as you might expect it’s not easy to type a message on a touchscreen keyboard while you’re running down the street (or god forbid, riding a bike). You can hit the photo button relatively easily, but to actually add a caption you have to be walking (or stopped completely). The second problem (which compounds the first) is the iPhone’s spell correction doesn’t seem to work on the status updates. So while I think it’s really neat functionality, it’s hard to actually use it when you want to be using it.
That said, it’s still super cool to see your photos along the route. Did you see that last one of me? I’d just done six speed intervals and I was pretty wrecked. I’m really looking forward to Sunday…
