official results!

the official times are finally out! 48:55 for me.

as a team we came in 161st out of 1090 teams. good job team!

there are also a few pics of me that were snapped by "paparazzo" along the race course. you can view them here.

bridge to brisbane - webcast

official results are still not up but you can see me finish the race!
i should be on the right side of the screen. i'm wearing a red/burgundy sleeveless shirt and have a grey sweatband on. hope this works!

i pass the finish line around 0:20 and throw my hands in the air. and then put my hands on my head around 0:27 or so. can you see me???

if this video doesn't work, go to the bridge to brisbane website, click on the "2008 webcasts" under the "2008 results tab", you can look up anyone's name and see how they did.

bridge to brisbane!

just got home from the RUN.
this morning we woke up at a quarter to 5, packed into 2 cars and headed east.

the run starts with a pretty steady climb up the gateway bridge... about 1.1km of incline... and then back down again. was feeling pretty good. was at the 3km mark, looked down at my watch and was a little surprised to see it read: 14:30. skipped the first water station and pushed on with mike. mike was my running partner today. it was a lot of dodging left and right. there were SO many people... i remember hearing something along the lines of 36,000 people.

we pushed on at a pretty regular pace for the next 4km or so. at about 4.5km, decided to stop for a quick drink - which was completely unnecessary and in retrospect a bad decision. at the water station, i ended up tripping over some feet/discarded cups and fell. nothing serious. i was alright.

they had one last surprise for us at about 8km. there was a tunnel and an off-ramp. down and up, up, up. was definitely feeling it at this point.
last few hundred meters were inside the ekka showgrounds. it was cool to be the runner with people lined up on either side cheering you on.

i crossed the line, and my (unofficial) time was 48:58. i went under 50 minutes! woohoo!
our official times should come out online tomorrow and will let you know when they do.

group photo post race.
aren't we a good-looking bunch?
:)

broncos 24 - knights 2.

went to my first rugby league game today. it was a lot of fun. the cheapest tickets at $19 were pretty decent and it definitely helped that the on-field product was entertaining to watch. sporting events are always much better when you're with large groups of friends...

still need to check out a game of aussie rules football and cricket.

*****
the bridge to brisbane run is in about 29 hours. as mentioned, it's a 10km run. in our training sessions matt and i have managed to run about 11km in ~59min. that's just about 5:30 minutes/kilometer. so for 10km, we should be able to do that in about 53-54 minutes. our goal is to crack the 50 minute mark. that's 5:00 min/km. a little too ambitious? nah... we can do it!

here's a map of our run.

canada finally has some medals.

we may be late to the party. but we're here. finally. thank you to Carol Huynh, Dave Calder & Scott Frandsen and Tonya Verbeek. we now have more medals than mongolia (2), ethiopia (1) and kyrgyzstan (2). however, we still trail some powerhouse countries like north korea (5), cuba (8), zimbabwe (4), azerbaijan (5) and kazakhstan (5).

this is pathetic.

*****
my totals for the week.
study: 10 hours
running: 30.2 km

did some hill training this week.

it's a short run (2.46km) but there are 2 huge hills on carmody road. one at munro street and the other at raven street. we ran this circuit 3 times (total of 7.38km) with a 2 minute rest in between the 2nd and 3rd laps.

next week's goals.
study: 15 hours
running: 35 km

back on the horse.

after a week's hiatus, went running again today. went to the city and back.
it was brisk.
(i'll let you decide whether i'm referring to my running speed or the outside temperature).

Etihad!

don't worry. i didn't just swear at you in some foreign language. etihad is actually the airline that i'll be taking home in november! yay! it ONLY cost me a smidgeon over $2400. it's pretty direct, i fly brisbane to abu dhabi and then from abu dhabi to toronto.
i know what you're thinking. "i've never even heard of etihad before. and where the heck is abu dhabi???"
Abu Dhabi is actually the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is the 2nd largest city behind Dubai. my layover is only a few hours but i've never been to the UAE so it'll be cool.
as for Etihad, it's a fairly new airline. it was founded in 2003 and is actually the national airline of the UAE. it's in direct competition with it's 'older brother' Emirates Airlines. from what i've read so far the service is quite good and flights are never delayed.

my roommates have been busting my chops for flying with Etihad. so i did a little research. according to JACDEC (Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre), Etihad (0.00) has a better safety index than Air Canada (0.04), American Airlines (0.22), British Airways (0.03), China Airlines (1.52) or Korean Air (0.87).
For completion sake, Cathay Pacific and Qantas also have a safety index of 0.00. without going too much into detail about the math behind the safety index, simply it is the number of fatalities/terametre. a terametre is 10^12m.

so if i survived a round trip on china airlines, i should be fine on etihad. right??? right.

*****
in other news. i took my photo for trephine (which is our yearbook - only the 2nd years get a yearbook). nothing fancy, just really casual. but i think i came out looking like a huge dork. i'm sure the hair was perfect :p but i think i had this goofy little smile on my face. oh well.

*****
did you hear? the "ice...cccoooooold...beeeeeeeeer!!!" guy (his real name is wayne mcmahon but everyone calls him the ice-cold-beer-guy) from rogers centre was fired recently. all you jays fans should know who he is. apparently he sold a drink to a 22 year old mystery shopper without checking out his ID. i'm told that the policy at rogers centre is to check all ID for anyone who looks less than 30. there's now a facebook group petitioning for his job back. it's now up to 18,000 members. that's impressive.

*****
haven't been running in the last few days. partly because the weather has been lousy and partly because i've had stuff going on right around my normal jogging time - around 4 in the afternoon. but mostly because i've been a tad lazy. the last run i did was on friday to the city. that was almost 11 clicks.

it's actually a really nice run. right along the river. should probably run it again today.

10k!

i broke the 10km mark this afternoon.

will probably look to find another running route though. this one is quite hilly (which i don't mind too much) but there are portions where you have to run on the road cause there is no sidewalk. THAT i didn't like too much. maybe i'll run to the city & back next time. i think that's about 10 clicks.

felt pretty good. my right shin was killing me though - what's the mechanism behind shin splints anyway??? in terms of heart rate and resp rate, was feeling alright.

*****
Edit: just googled shin splints and this is my understanding of it in a nutshell. your shins have muscles (e.g. tibialis anterior) that dorsiflex your feet (pull your toes close to your shins). now when you run, you often get your heel striking the ground quite forcefully with each stride. this triggers a chain of events. the heel strike causes a strong plantar flexion (pointing your toes). this stretches the muscles (esp. the aforementioned tibialis anterior). this stretch then causes a reactive/reflexive contraction of these muscles. this forceful & reactive contraction is what gives you the pain of shin splints.

the good thing is that like any other muscle within the body, the tibialis anterior muscle can be strengthened & shin splints will eventually go away. apparently stretching helps too.

running log.

just came home from a run.
am trying to lengthen my runs. the route that we've been doing is only about 6km. this morning, went for a 7.5km run.

thanks to ms. cinshum for this runningAHEAD site.

run fat boy run! run like the wind!!!

feel like running lately.
as a matter of fact, have slowly started running again. roughly twice a week, covering ~5km in about 40 minutes. and so far the knee is doing alright. we went running as a house - susan, laura, matt, myself - on saturday and we got caught in the rain. COMPLETELY SOAKED.

i've never been a great distance runner. and don't know where this drive to run is coming from.
maybe it's from watching that movie "run fatboy run".

or maybe it's cause a friend of mine just completed her first marathon.

or maybe it was my interview with this 87 year old man at the hospital. for an 87 year old, he was in tremendous shape. he says he ran marathons until he was in his 60s and still ran 5km daily right up until his late 70s. (i know what you're thinking: "so if he's in such great shape, why was he in the hospital then?" smarty pants. for YOUR information, he was admitted for a pulmonary embolism, most likely due to the fact that he had surgery 2 months ago to repair a hernia and then recently spent 3.5 hours on a plane - sitting still cause the people in the aisle seats fell asleep - flying from new zealand to australia).

or even still, maybe running is our generation's pre-mid-life crisis THING. seems like a LOT of people are picking up running. while my blog tallies up the number of hours spent studying, other blogging friends like cinshum tally up the distance she's covered running, swimming and biking. all in preparation for a triathlon down the road.

there is a short 12km, Bridge to Brisbane run in september. i think that's a good place to start.