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After that long running post here's some alternative entertainment. I mentioned about doing some waterskiing at Xmas time for the first time since last summer, with a potential guest appearance on OzCoastAction.
Well the lads have finally put the video up. I missed the motorbike session as we had to go home that day…not that I would have produced anything worth showing. My section starts around the 3 minute mark until the end. I was a bit rusty, but started to pick up after a couple of runs. Apart from the skiing itself, there were a couple of big falls that they couldn’t resist putting in and slowing down!!

The video should be embedded below, otherwise the link to Episode 3 is here.

Extra Long Weekend

Week 7 of 18

Tuesday 8km Run - Intervals
Included 5 x 3 minute intervals with 1 minute jog recovery around a hilly part of the Connells Point area of Sydney.


Wednesday 12km Medium Aerobic Run
On this run I trotted over to Peakhurst through the industrial area and past the golf course. To start the sky was clear and colourful, but as I was reaching the farthest point from home I could see a single storm cell developing in front of my eyes. There was some thunder, lighting and the threat of rain. I was a bit concerned, but as I headed back the storm died out to just a grey sky and spread rain throughout the area. It’s been a long time since I ran in the rain, and it was very refreshing.
In the evening it was nice to catch up with some CRs over a lovely Indian dinner in at Darlinghurst. :)


Thursday 9km Hill Reps
This was supposed to be Friday’s run, but I doubted my enthusiasm for hill reps on the day after the Big Day Out so decided to run it early and sleep in on Friday!
Today was 5 x 90 second efforts. It’s actually tough to find a 90 second plus hill of suitable grade, and today’s hill was only about 60 seconds, so I just kept the intensity up after the hill flattened out. By the third climb I hit my initial 60 second point in 45 seconds, so it seems a couple of weeks of hill training is starting to pay off.
Thursday then turned into a combined running and “Cross Training” day (Big Day Out), but more on that soon!


Friday was a well deserved and thoroughly enjoyed sleep in, followed by a drive back to Port from Sydney. Traffic was bad getting out of Sydney, so it took an extra half hour of so on expected travel time. Was good to be sitting down the whole time though!


Saturday 28km Long Run
After getting ahead of schedule with the double up Thursday I’m keeping it that way for the moment. This was my longest run ever, although that will be further stretched a few times over the coming months.

I ran along the Oxley Highway to the donut, up the highway to Cassegrain Winery, then Fernbank Creek Road to Hastings River Drive, Gordon St, Lord St and Kennedy Drive to home.

The Oxley Highway doesn’t exactly provide great running conditions with narrow, uneven shoulders and plenty of bends, but the quiet country road back road from Cassegrain more than made up for it. I’d ridden Fernbank Creek Rd on the motorbike before but it was a particularly nice section to run, apart from the dog “guarding” one of the properties. There was thick fog out and back from the highway, which kept things cool for the first couple of hours.

Once back in town the fog broke, making conditions hot and humid, so the last 40 minutes or so was a tough effort, especially the climb up Lord and Kennedy. I had my head down on the hill climbs and was beyond the point of caring that I could barely see out of my sunnies with the sweat dripping on the inside of them… there was no dry patch of clothing to wipe them off with anyway!

Had a gel at 1:35 and 2:20…didn’t feel much from the first one, but the second one seemed to give me a lift to finish off the run. Carried a 600ml sports drink plus water in the fuel belt, which I refilled on the way back.
The 28km actually came up over a kilometre from home, so I’d walk for a couple of minutes, then break into an easy jog for half a minute. Partly it was to get back home quicker, and partly as an exercise in getting myself moving again when my legs were tired and didn’t want to keep going. Unusually my quads were a little sore after this run, but I believe that’s the result of nearly 12 hours on my feet on Thursday.


Sunday is just supposed to include an easy 20-30 minute walk to loosen up, and so it shall be.

Back to some Running now

Week 6 of 18

Tuesday 7km Intervals
After a day off and a massage on Monday I was up for some intervals today – specifically 3 x 4 minutes firm with 2 minute jog recovery. I cruised along Matthew Flinders Drive and through Emerald Downs keeping the efforts to the flat sections as much as possible. Hot and sweaty.


Wednesday 14.5km Medium Aerobic
I ran through Dahlsford and Greenmeadows Estates then up Lake Rd, Gordon St and back via Pacific Drive at around 5:40 pace.


Thursday 45 minutes Cross Training – Cycle
I rode along a similar route to my run yesterday. Afterwards I caught up with Miners at a shiny new café in town over coffee and breakfast. For those who read The Miner Monologues it will be clear whose influence is involved in going for coffee after a ride but I’d like to point out that I’d been home, showered and changed beforehand so it was really a separate event. Still, I know it’s a slippery slope ;)


Friday 8.5km Strength / Endurance Run
More hill repeats. This time it was 3 x 2 minute efforts up the same hill after a 6km warm up. I was hitting the same mark after 90 seconds as I was last week but was only 3/4 of the way through at that point. I thought this was supposed to be an easy week…lucky there were only 3 reps! A tough one.


Sunday 20km Long Run
I mapped myself out an estate run today. Not quite 8 beaches in 8km, but I really needed 20km so too bad!
Made my way through: the estate south of Emerald Downs (?), Emerald Downs, Dahlsford, Crestwood, Greenmeadows, the Industrial Estate, Flynns, Waniora. Ok, I know the last couple are a bit dodgy…they’re really more areas rather than estates, but it’s my run and I’ll call it what I like :P
It was a very warm morning, and the route turned out to be a little hillier than I expected, so it was tough. Carried but didn’t use a gel.



Tesso, as far as a goal for the marathon. I’m thinking that apart from finishing, I’d like to beat 4 hours. Some days that seems like a tough ask whilst on others it seems more probable. It’s still early, with the serious part of the training to come. I think once I knock over one of the 36km runs I’ll have a better idea as I’ve yet to run more than 30km in my life!


This week is a “Hard” week. Running should be on track but my cross training sessions are thrown out. On Monday it was replaced with a long drive through the fire affected areas to the north of Sydney. Thursday’s is being replaced by the Big Day Out, which is more than worthy of cross training status seeing as there are bands I’d like to see almost continuously from 1pm to 11.30pm. Anyone else gonna be there on Thursday? Oh, and a little dinner on Wednesday night also :)

Some more diving pics

An eel poking it's head out.

A couple more sharks cruising the gutter.

Clown Fish.

A starfish.
Slothy Boy checking out the shark.

A Leafy Scorpion fish - very easy to miss this one.

A dive wouldn't be complete without a friendly blue groper hanging around.

Double Boat Dive at Fish Rock (South West Rocks, NSW)

After 9 months and more than 100 posts it’s finally happened…I have a couple of dives to post about, so you know it’s not gonna be a brief post!! Given that my financial and time priorities lie elsewhere for the time being, it’ll probably be as long again before the next dive even though I’m psyched up for some more!

Jodie’s brother, Ben (aka Slothy Boy) and I were booked in with South West Rocks Dive Centre for 7am Saturday morning. After the usual formalities (fairly straightforward as I have all my own gear beside tanks) the boat was loaded up and we were off for the 25 minute trip to Fish Rock. Surface conditions were good, with very little swell and clear skies. There was a bit of a breeze making the surface of the water a bit choppy, but we moored on the sheltered side of the rock.

Dive 1 was to be all the way through Fish Rock Cave, which is a cave that runs over 100 metres through the middle of Fish Rock. The cave profile is here.

After a briefing from the dive master I promptly geared up, did a giant stride off the back of the boat and floated around waiting for most of the 6 others to get their act together. The water was quite cool at first, although my dive computer registered 19 degrees C which isn’t too bad really and with a 2 piece dive suit you warm up soon enough.

Once everyone was ready we descended to 23 metres where the “deep entrance” of the cave lies and after a quick torch check we started filing into the cave. It’s quite narrow to start off with, before widening once you rise up one of the chimneys to the upper section of the cave.

Being in a group doesn’t give much opportunity to do your own exploration of the cave, but I did take the opportunity to shine the torch around and it’s pretty impressive looking around and seeing the fissures extending above you. For me, the most amazing part was approaching the shallow entrance when the light starts penetrating through, throwing up the spectacular silhouette of fish teeming through the shallow entrance to the cave, which is around 12 metres deep.

The shallow entrance to the cave holds an incredible amount of life. I still had about 150 bar of air by the time we made it there, and we hung around for a while. There were up to a dozen grey nurse sharks of varying sizes slowly cruising along the gutter and into the cave. A couple of huge bull rays and wobbegong sharks were relaxing on the bottom, as well as a couple of moray eels poking their heads out of their lairs.

After a while we made our way back around the outside of the rock to the mooring line and ascended to the surface with a standard safety stop at 5 metres for 3 minutes.


We relaxed on the boat for a surface interval of about an hour before it was time to get the second dive underway.


Dive 2 was to be a more relaxed dive back around the outside of the rock to the cave’s shallow entrance. Whilst it was a great experience to go through the cave on the first dive, I really enjoyed the second one because there was more opportunity to do our own thing and I found the most enjoyable section to be in and around the shallow cave entrance. When the rest of the group went elsewhere Slothy Boy and myself ventured back into the cave to take some more photos, do some exploration and hang around the side of the gutter while the sharks cruised past. The critically endangered Grey Nurse Sharks are beautiful, amazing creatures to watch as well as being extremely placid and virtually harmless to humans. Even so, it’s certainly awe inspiring when you’re sitting there and a shark larger than yourself is eyeing you off as it’s heading towards you before gliding past just half a metre away!

Aside from the sharks there’s quite an amazing diversity of marine life in the area. We saw angel fish, a couple of rare leafy scorpion fish, quite a few moray eels, plenty of friendly blue gropers, some clown fish, heaps of snapper, lobster, bull rays, lionfish, bullseyes, starfish, wobbegong sharks plus just far too many other miscellaneous fish to name including many large schools all around.

I hadn’t dived Fish Rock before but had heard so much about it, so I’m glad to have finally taken the opportunity to dive there. It definitely lived up to the hype as far as I’m concerned and is right up there with the best dives I’ve ever done. I’m looking forward to getting back out there again in the future. Thanks to Slothy Boy for organising it and bringing along the camera with underwater housing. Between the 2 of us we took heaps of photos, of which most were pretty dodgy but there were still a few good shots. There are a couple below and I’ll follow up with some more once I sort them out a bit.

The stats from my dive computer were:

Dive 1
Max Depth: 23 metres
Average Temp: 19 Deg C
Bottom time: 44 min

Surface Interval: 1hr 5 min

Dive 2
Max Depth: 19 metres
Average Temp: 19 Deg C
Bottom time: 55min

We had about 10-15 metres visibility and there was just a minimal amount of both surge and current. I travelled through quite a few thermoclines (rapid change of temperature) and it’s always nice going from cold to warm but terrible the other way. You can see them coming up because the water shimmers in the same way that you see the heat rising up off a hot road. The most severe one was actually in the cave, and the warm change actually made my eyes water!

Nitrogen absorption remained in the “green zone” throughout both dives according to the computer, so they were both fairly conservative profiles.



I'm at the shallow entrance here and in case you missed it I'm pointing out the Grey Nurse in the background

A morey eel poking his head out to see what's going on

Grey Nurse with entourage

The view from inside the shallow entrance to the cave. It was more impressive before the fish made room for the divers!

A Lionfish with it's venomous spines

Week 5 of 18...done

Week 4 (cont)

Saturday (6/1/07) Cycling
The program includes a day or two a week of cross training, and seeing as I’m struggling to get to the pool later in the day at the moment, I decided I may as well cover it with some time on the bike. I took just under an hour out through the industrial area before heading back into town and home along the beaches.


Sunday 17km Long Run
I made my way through the Lighthouse Beach area, along the coast to Town Beach, and wound my way home through some of the back streets. As it was a shorter long run I wanted to keep it at roughly at my expected marathon pace, and finished in roughly an hour and a half. The pace itself was fairly comfortable over what I’d say is a hillier course than Canberra. Now I need to work on my endurance so I can keep it up for two and a half times that distance!


Week 5 of 18

Tuesday 5km Recovery Run
Nice easy run finishing with 5x60m strides.


Wednesday 13km Aerobic Run
I covered a similar route to the long run…just without the Lighthouse Beach section at the start.


Thursday 1 hour Cycle
Out around the Innes Lake area for this early morning ride.


Friday 10km Strength/Endurance Run
I skipped the hill workout last week, so this was my first session with hill reps for at least 6 months. After running along Bangalay Drive, Matthew Flinders Drive and through Emerald Downs I hit the hill where Pacific Drive climbs up from Ocean Drive and knocked out 4 x 90 second efforts with jog back recoveries. This was tough as I was trying to drive strongly up the hill, but each rep fell a few metres short of the previous effort. At least I’ve got the mark to aim for now, and it’ll be interesting in a few weeks time to see if I can improve on that after a few more hill sessions.


Sunday 25km Long Run
I was in a really good frame of mind for this run, and it seemed to fly by in a flash. I went out along the Oxley Highway past the golf driving range before working my way to Town Beach and home via the beaches. After a half hour period when the sun was blazing even though it was early, the clouds came in and cooled things right down to perfect running weather.
I ended up with a couple of short breaks, the first one whilst refilling the fuel belt on Gordon Street. I had a bit of a chat with a few local runners that I hadn’t seen for a while down at Town Beach. They’d just finished their run, and after standing around for a few minutes my legs thought it was a bit cruel of me to start going again when they thought we were also done for the day! I lost a bit of rhythm after that unexpected stop, but made it home the last few k’s without too much trouble.

I had a good preparation for this run. Apart from drinking lots of water the day before and in the morning, I have a few Endura Magnesium formula samples, and tried one of them before I left, as well as an Up and Go and a banana. I certainly felt good for most of the run so something worked well.



Week 5 was classified as a Moderate week, and next week is an Easy one before the program starts to build from there. Everything feels fine at the moment. I have a massage booked for tomorrow and I’m looking forward to that. I have another post to write up in the next day or so that I’m very excited about!!

Week 3 of 18 (and parts of 2/4)

Christmas Eve 20km Run
I chose a semi hilly route for this one, and that combined with a warm, humid morning made it a challenging run. I didn’t seem to be able to get into a rhythm for any period of time.


Week 3 of 18

Christmas and Boxing Days were scheduled as cross training and recovery run days on the program. Although I didn’t do anything structured, the activities involved over the two days should cover it. There was plenty of chasing of kids, backyard cricket, chasing footballs, volleyball, plus some waterskiing. Plenty of overindulgence was involved, but that’s to be expected.
Wiggum had the video camera on the boat when we were skiing so I might even score a guest appearance in the third episode of OzCoastAction when the lads get their act together. I pulled off a couple of spectacular falls that will no doubt feature, but there may be some actual skiing included as well!! I’ll post the link when it’s up.
We were at Jodie’s parents for Christmas this year, and ended up staying a couple of days longer than planned. As there were a couple of dozen people around, and the kids were getting up far too early for the late night crew, a few of us pitched our tents down the back (it’s a bush property on acreage, so there’s plenty of room to spread out). It was nice to bed down with the crickets, spiders and wallabies for a while.


Wednesday 12km Run
After gearing up in my tent I headed out for a run on mostly unsealed roads and country scenery. The excesses of the previous couple of days meant this was a sluggish run, and I struggled to finish the planned distance. My shoes were fairly dusty at the end of it all. I was glad to get out and start the day with a run, but needed a bit of a snooze in front of the cricket later in the day.


Friday 7km Run
A quick hike the Waniora area saw me slowly getting back up to speed!


New Years Eve 23km Run
This run felt better than last weeks’ long run. I had to hang in there at times, but I didn’t feel like I was being sapped of my energy like last week. With so many visitors in town at the moment there were plenty of people out and about this morning.

I followed a similar route to last week, heading down Granite St, Hill Rd, Lake Rd, then over to Lake Innes before heading across to Town Beach via Oxley/Gordon and back home via the coastal road - Pacific Drive.

This run saw me finish December with 144km for the month and 1282km for the year.


Week 4 of 18

Tuesday 6km Run
This was just a recovery run with 4 x 100m strides to finish.


Wednesday 9km Run
I weaved my way in and around some hilly sections of the Lighthouse Beach area and over to Emerald Downs this morning. As it was just an aerobic run today I took it easy up the hills, but I’m actually looking forward to the upcoming hill sessions to build up some additional strength in the legs.


The last few days have seen some rearrangement of the furniture around the house and how the rooms are being used. We’d been putting it off for a bit, but finally Tyler slept in his own room for the first time the other night and seems to be sleeping better than usual as a result. Yay for us all!