More from Down Under

Monday, 16 March
This was unexpected and awesome; I ran with Dave today! We'll see if I destroyed his knee or not. We had a lot of fun at the beach today sunning and then we went running in the park for maybe 4.5 miles. Legs feeling okay.

Tuesday, 17 March
Went on maybe a 3 hour hike with Dave in the Blue Mountains. It was really cool, and there was TONS of stairs, like an insane amount, and they were all crazy treacherous. So that really worked my calves and hip flexors. Afterwards I got myself out for maybe 30 minutes in the bustling town of Katoomba (very quiet actually) which unfortunately also does not have a track. Are there ANY tracks in Australia?!

Wednesday, 18 March
Back to the city today to see a play at the opera house. It was pretty neat. Then I went for a run around the University of Sydney, again looking for a track. They had swimming, field hockey, rugby, cricket... and no track. G-damn. I did find some sweet grass to run on though, so all was not lost. Feeling kinda tired, Dave and I need to take it a bit easy tomorrow. Not worth it for the impact on my running and the grumpiness. Also, I need to make more of an effort to get the run done in the morning I think.... that would probably help.

Thursday 19 March
Off, drove to Port Awesome.

Friday 20 March
AM:
Ran on the beach to see if One Mile beach really lived up to its name. Not so- my guess was that round trip was about 1.7 miles. Ran relatively hard and barefoot. Surprisingly easy to run in my new one piece bathing suit! Does this bode well for a potential triathlon someday?

PM:
Wanted to do a hugely ridikalus beach run, but I got a bit of a late start so the tide was coming up and I had to turn around early. This was the most surreally beautiful run of my life. Imagine a pristine beach with no one on it; blue ocean as far as you can see; and just off the beach is 30k of sand dunes, also stretching in front of you as far as you can see. It was amazing, see if you can google image search Stockton Beach or the Worimi dunes. Totally nuts.

Literally after the first 10 minutes I only saw a couple of 4wd trucks and a fisherman. I went out for 30 minutes until the tide made me nervous that I was going to be slogging through dune on the way back. It was really disorienting because there was no sense of scale and no landmarks to judge distance by. On the way back there was quite a headwind, so I had something to fight. I then did 20 more minutes a bit easier in town, for a little over 80 minutes total. I think I did about 11.5 total today.

Saturday 21 March
Surfed for about 2.5 hours at Anna Bay. I was planning on running afterwards but surfing actually wore me out. I think walking the board out was tiring, as was the jumping up. It was super fun and I want to go again! I was scared I would suck at it and get frustrated, but they gave us big boards that were easy to get up on and the waves were a good size. Me and Dave owned it. There was a sighting of blue bottles in the water, but I didn't see them. Are they the same as portugeuse man-o-wars?

Anyways afterwards I was le tired and so we napped on the beach and then I drove us back to Sydney, staying on the correct side of the road (whew!).

Sunday 22 March
Off, was planning on doing a last big run at the park today, but Dave and I got mad drunk last night with some new Australian friends and so we got up really late. Did a beach cliff-top walk from Coogee to Bondi instead. It was very pretty and a good send off for Dubai.