running with Hannah

Ellen's Creek.

If you're still with me you'll know about my new-found interest in running. I chose not to blog about it daily but in hindsight perhaps I should have as it has become something of a passion for me.

I always reserve Sunday for my longest run of the week. This morning I mapped a new run on Map My Run following a long section of the abandoned railway line, now reborn as the Confederation Trail. The round trip measured a whisker under eleven miles, my longest ever!

Today I ran with Hannah and she was a tough partner - Tropical Storm Hannah. I set out in light rain and the threat of a lot more. After only a mile the heavens opened and I was drenched in seconds. I mean soaked to the skin. There was no point in turning back as I couldn't possibly get any wetter now. Hannah gushed across the road, surged in the storm drains, and coursed through culverts barrelling towards North River. I stopped avoiding deep puddles as there was nowhere else to run. My running shoes were full and heavy. A pole carrying electricity cables sizzled and crackled as I passed then suddenly a bright flare leaped from the top of the pole and the same instant I was deafened by an almighty clap of thunder. I think the pole was struck. There was no sidewalk for the first few miles but traffic was light and I was grateful the few cars and trucks were slowing to pull around me!

I had the new route fixed in my head and picked up the trail about three miles from home. The rain was torrential and I was reminded of this morning's "severe weather warning" - the remnants of Tropical Storm Hannah had spun up the Atlantic seaboard and was blowing herself out over Prince Edward Island. After an hour I still felt good and guessed I was easily maintaining my planned sub ten minute miles. Unsurprisingly I saw no other runners today. One lone walker on the Confederation Trail raised his hand and called, "Good morning" as I passed him, adding it hadn't been like this when he started out. "Me neither," I agreed.

One section of the Trail was barricaded and signed for repair work but I ran around the barrier and sloshed through some deep red mud before the gravel path resumed. An hour and a half in, I felt at this rate I could certainly manage a half-marathon. Today wasn't the day though as I was pacing for eleven miles. Even where the trail crossed roads I didn't need to stop, very few people were braving this deluge even in their cars.

As I crossed the bridge at Ellen's Creek where the road inclines up I felt my energy draining and was glad I would be able to rest my knees, hips and ankles in just a few minutes. I completed the 10.69 mile course in 104 minutes and 3 seconds. Michelle had run a bath ready for me and I sank gratefully beneath the warm water to soak my old, aching body. I love running!

conspiracy theories

Loose Change What really happened on 9/11.
Endgame The blueprint for global enslavement.
Zeitgeist The spirit of our age.
The Greatest Story Ever Denied The UFO phenomenon.
Esoteric Agenda Global conspiracy revealed.
Secret Space Extraordinary revelations about space.

I used to be sceptical about anything which I couldn't see or experience myself. That has changed in recent years and I now have an open mind about theories like those expressed in the above documentaries.

The films show how easily false truths can be propagated and the real truth suppressed. An unsuspecting population will believe almost anything it is told and will seldom bother to search for the bigger picture. Various conspiracy theories are put forward here in clear and credible terms by intelligent articulate contributors and there are many areas of overlap.

Each film runs for about two hours so the complete list does require a significant investment of your time. If you can afford that investment it will repay with highly thought-provoking content.

Happy viewing.

new world record

With all this talk of Usain Bolt and his sprinting I fear my own efforts are being shamefully overlooked. Here I am, achieveing noteworthy progress in my quest to become a proper runner, while that West Indian boy is grabbing all the limelight in Beijing. Let's put things in perspective. He is running a block or so in a few seconds which is fine for youngsters but I am eating up mile after mile of sidewalk and trail every day, like a real man. OK, his average speed is about 24mph while mine is closer to 7mph but surely distance counts for more!

I have plotted various courses around Charlottetown using Map My Run which relies on Google Earth, so I know the precise distances I cover. I keep meticulous records in "Sport Tracks" to monitor my evolution to finely honed specimen of humanity.

I completed my first five mile run in fifty eight minutes in May 2008. On Tuesday my time was 44 four minutes 56 seconds and that wasn't the only world record to fall this week. I also smashed my previous best for three and a quarter miles, lowering my time to 27 minutes 13 seconds. Yesterday I scorched through my 2 and a half mile course in just 21 minutes and 58 seconds. Phew!

Sunday I will be tackling a gruelling 8.7 mile course which takes me way out of town almost to the airport. As usual I will be counting my steps, to make sure I don't set off too fast and run out of energy. The sidewalks here are laid in large concrete sections and I count strides per crack (don't laugh), usually seven strides per five cracks will keep me slow enough to last the distance. The observant among you will have calculated this run is almost exactly one third marathon distance, a deliberate contrivance by me as I work towards my goal of 26 miles 385 yards.

I tend to build my morning around the run. Breakfast is a boiled egg with a slice of buttered toast and a mug of tea or coffee. Then I slide into my rather fetching black running gear: Under Armour compression shorts (long) and a Nike second skin shirt, Nike Air Pegasus running shoes and an Ironman stopwatch. Not only does the outfit look entirely convincing but it fits where it touches so there is no chance of chafing.

When the race is run, I sit and sweat for a while, dripping salty body juices on the front doorstep. Next comes the delicious long, cool bath to ease the muscles. Within an hour or two all the excitement is over for another day.

I mischievously like to claim I am now a finely tuned athlete but the truth is after an hour of stiffening up on the couch I can barely move and first thing on the morning, well - first thing in the morning I hobble like an old man. "Fleet of foot" only applies once a day.

Thanks to Michelle for photographing me as I crossed my imaginary finishing line. She cleverly captured me off the ground in mid-stride and deftly airbrushed a passing car out of the scene.

time's winged chariot

I Googled "time" quotations and found there are dozens. We are obsessed with it and rightly so. This morning I found, and was reminded of, so many sharp and witty statements about the passage of time that I can't pick a favourite.

We frivolously waste our time until one day it dawns on us that our time is finite. It depends on our character but we either develop "ostrich syndrome" or face mortality by drawing a will, draft final letters of request and instruction and purge our lives of all unnecessary possessions and distractions.

By middle-age I had accepted I was never going to be an astronaut or an activist, a politician or a pole-vaulter, gregarious or dynamic, a leader or regulator. Then it became a race against time to achieve realistic short-term goals. I wrote my memoirs at age forty and recently added another decade's worth. Putting a life in order is a continuing task though not an endless one, as the Grim Reaper will doubtless call time before I am entirely ready.

I narrowed my interests to music, motorcycling, photography, writing and reading. There is no time for any more... but maybe there is. I rekindled my boyhood interest in astronomy and began researching serious telescopes. I love to catalogue but I don't have time to map the known universe. I would nonetheless like to see with my own eyes the light which left distant galaxies hundreds of millions of years ago. A telescope is poised delicately on the back-burner for now while I pursue an avid interest in Science-Fiction novels, a new offshoot interest which thieves more of my time.

It takes time to write a novel. Sooner or later I will make space in my schedule to expand one of my short stories because, well... because don't we all (the aspiring immortals among us anyway) want to leave a permanent mark behind? First I need to think of all the right words, then sift them into the right order and finally push myself boldly into the arena of rejection - the hard part.

Oh, and I nearly forgot genealogy, another time-consuming interest which has filled many a gigabyte on my hard drive. I have unearthed the names and brief details of over a thousand lives which took many centuries to live. Wouldn't it be amazing to talk to those long-dead souls and discover how they filled their time?

Never before has there been so much to worry about yet so much astonishing complacency. As we rush towards the Age of Aquarius, the Internet bombards us with conspiracy theories: 9/11, Roswell, the Jesus myth, GM crops, global warming, world domination, 2012, Kennedy, Bilderberg and on and on and on... They are probably all true and all inter-related.

It seems likely that later this century a New World Order will see a much depleted global population micro-chipped under the rule of a single planetary government. I can't do anything about that but despite trimming down, you see, I have too many diversions and not enough hours in the day.

Oh well...

After three months of running my times continue to fall. My favourite outing of 3.21 miles is down to 28 mins 55 secs. I ran a total distance of eighty-nine miles in July. The temperature stayed level at 28C (82F) but I forged ahead and ran every day. I think it is time I started writing every day too, while there is still time.

"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near."

To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
1621-1678

sunset

Click for more views of a Cavendish sunset.

Georgetown, Prince Edward Island

Today we drove east to Georgetown to see the schooner "Bluenose II" which was in the small port there. This is a replica of a 1920s Nova Scotian racing schooner. At one hundred and sixty one feet long and with a main mast towering one hundred eighteen feet overhead it is a very impressive timber ship. I put a few more pictures here which show the vessel in a little more detail.

to the australian wanker who keeps spamming me and my friends' sites...

You Patrick/Micky are the arsehole of the Lord, farting out the divine stench of your own putrefaction. Point your antipodean anus elsewhere. You are a dry drunk. You are still drinking in your head. You have no concept of real sobriety. Stay away because none of us has any interest in your weasel words. FUCK OFF.