spacekadet blog

After 6 weeks of training for the 10k, Sunday arrived with a big giant wheezy sigh of relief.

Tim and I went to Camden in the afternoon to acquire a run wallet at Runners Need. Big score: they gave us some retro wrist bands with zip-a-round pouches for holding useful stuff like keys and cash - FOR FREE. The £2.20 train ticket was officially worth it.

Camden is a pretty cool part of London. It is to London what Lincoln park is to Chicago: young, fresh, and somehow a little less gray. We grabbed lunch at “New Culture Revolution”, an unpretentious little Chinese joint that served up cheap yummy food pleasantly lacking in the grease department unlike so many other Chinese restaurants I’ve visited. Yum - ginger!

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to fueling and waiting. For all our anticipation and planning, the journey to the run was a bit panicky. We jogged to a bus stop, took a bus to the Shordich tube station, which was closed, so we jogged back to the bus stop, sat in traffic, hopped off the bus and onto a tube, then onto another tube, and arrived at the Start just in time. We barely had time to stretch before we were off.

I don’t think I could have asked for a better race - the weather was perfect, the crowd was electric, and the run over Tower Bridge was incredible (click here for a map of the course). About half-way through the race, my ankle pain started to kick in. Grrr. I decided to focus my energy on my breathing and technique. Around 31 minutes into it we hit the 5k mark. Tim and I had a short chat and decided to make a push for the sub-hour 10k.

Due to the 30,000 people in attendance, the streets of London were quite crowded with fluorescent yellow runners. I spent the last half of the race dodging people - this was really fun and encouraging! Pushing myself a little harder kept my mind off my ankle, and increasing my stride seemed to ease the pain. Thankfully, the pain never really progressed into anything terrible.

As we ran towards the finish, I heard Tim say “we can make it in under 60″. So I picked up pace and sprinted towards the big yellow arc thing. As I ran through, almost out of steam, I heard people say “keep on running!” Oops, I guess that wasn’t the finish after all.

The remaining last 400 meters were the longest of the race. In the end I finished in 60 minutes and 9 seconds. I’m feeling pretty psyched about my time and really proud of myself for keeping up with the training - it really paid off. I ran the Keep Austin Weird 5k in 33:52, and I’m profoundly encouraged by this huge improvement since the summer. (I’m sure that not running in 104 degree heat helped as well.)

It would have been cool to have finished in less than 60 minutes, and yeah, maybe I would have if I wasn’t slowed down by the crowded bits of the run. But at the same time, I think it was the energy of the crowd that kept my pace up in the first place.

Congrats to Tim who finished in 59:55!

If you’re at all interested, you can try to find me crossing the finish line in this video clip. I’m bobbing in and out of view in my blue Cubs hat. Go Cubbies!

What next? It’s time to set some new goals and sort out my ankle - and find another race to run!

Other tales of 10k ass-whoopin:

Alex Hansford
bignoseduglyguy
Red Robin

Tim took me to see Hamlet last night at the Barbican. Having never read Hamlet, I’m sure I missed about half the play. This was especially noticeable during the intial 20 minute break-in period in which my mind adapted to Shakespeare-speak. Tim was wonderful and whispered the occasional synopsis into my ear throughout the show.

I definitely enoyed Hamlet - the acting was superb, the set was marvelous. It was directed by Yukio Ninagawa who is apparently quite famous. The set and costume design revealed obvious Japanese influences which worked very well with the themes. The most flare was exhibited during the play scene in which colorful masked figures dance and sway acting out the King’s heinous deeds. I would have liked to have seen more of this, but Hamlet is a very dark play, after all. I can’t really think of a place where he could have fit in more color. Perhaps in the final scene, which did not pack as much punch as I would have hoped.

Could this have been affected by the girl sitting in front of me with the giant afro?

We’ll never know.

After Hamlet, we headed towards Farringdon area to check out Tinseltown, London’s Hollywood-themed 24-hour diner. I generally avoid these types of ludicrous establishments, however, there is a severe shortage of late-night dining options in London, and Hamlet, which started at 7:30, was nearly 4 hours long. You get the picture. And since it was featured in TimeOut’s Cheap Eats In London guide, we figured it couldn’t be all bad.

The diner was located in a basement with a neat old brick ceiling. Beyond that, it’s Hollywood “theme” amounted to photos of movie stars hung on the walls (un-autographed) and TV sets showing music videos. As advertised, Tinseltown had a decent list of milk shakes. Tim tried the Malteaser shake, which was good, but a far cry from the creations at Mickey’s Dairy Bar (though it doesn’t really seem fair to London to compare its milkshakes to that of dairyland Wisconsin). The food was average, the environment, dark and smokey. It’s the kind of place you’d kill for after a long and late bender, after which greasy food is both delicious and essential. As such, Tinseltown’s large booths seemed to anticipate the arrival of a late night posse of club kids coming down after a night of partying.

However, Tinseltown didn’t really match our Shakespearean moods, and I’m not exactly jonesin’ to return. It’s good to know there’s a 24 hour diner around. That’s about where my fondness for Tinseltown ends.

As does this entry. Another weekend begins, and I have a travelcard!

In comparison to London’s week & feeble wi-fi, Taipei is looking pretty tempting…

How cool is this: Google Scholar, an engine for searching academic articles and literature.