Running and Recovery

It's Sunday evening and I'm just now realising why my head hurts: I haven't had a coffee all day.  It's also 8:15pm and I don't much feel like a coffee because I also want to sleep.  I'll just press on as I am then.

It's been a busy weekend in most respects.  Saturday saw me drive up to Croydon to race in the 5km track event in the Victoria Police and Emergency Services Games.  Weather was not on my side, alas.  I got there just in time for the afternoon events to be cancelled on account of lightning.  Rotten luck!

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5km cancelled because of weather; they said it was on account of lightning, but I think it was because this sort of weather gives SES an unfair advantage! #running #emergencyservicesgames

A post shared by Stephen Tuck (@sdtuc2) on Mar 29, 2019 at 7:55pm PDT

I drove back to my digs with a stop on the way for groceries.  After some attending to some SES paperwork I headed down to Our Lady's for vigil Mass.  The gospel reading today was the parable of the prodigal son.  I think the thing to remember about that passage is that it says very little about what it is to be a son, but a great deal on what it is to be a father: the father saw his son at a distance, and was looking for him to come back.

Stained Glass of Pope St Pius V at Our Lady Help of Christians Church, East Brunswick, Victoria, Australia

I was utterly worn out by evening and crashed into bed at 9pm.

Today started early, getting up about 6:20am to drive to Ballarat for the Emergency Services Games half-marathon.  Conditions weren't promising, with steady drizzle and wind.  However, the course itself - the Steve Moneghetti track around Lake Wendouree - is all that you could ask for: mostly flat with some undulations.  I was getting a cramping pain in my right calf after 5kms but decided to just tough it out the rest of the way.  I didn't medal, but my time was a comfortable 16 minutes faster than I'd expected.  I was pretty happy about that.

I was back in Melbourne for a quick Facetime with the girls, who had had a fun evening playing on four-wheelers with their friends.  Lord but they were tired.  I got through the rest of my SES backlog and decided I could do with a nice recuperative walk to the Great Northern Hotel, where I could enjoy a nice recuperative pint or two and maybe some chips.  The GNH is rapidly becoming my favourite pub: not excessively noisy, wide selection of IPAs, a big beer garden and dogs are welcome.  Really, what's not to like?  I took a recent copy of Spectator and enjoyed a couple of beers and unwound a bit.

Which brings me to now.  I've had dinner and prepared this post.  I know I should write a casenote but I really want a good night's sleep, so I think I'll have a cleanup and turn in instead.  Overall it's been a satisfying weekend.

What have you been doing with your weekend?