July Review

Another month of winter over, which feels ever more cold and rainy than usual.

Straight into running which was a busy month with some travelling for races. The month started with the Gold Coast half marathon where I finished under 1 hour 20 minutes again, but a bit slower than I hoped. There's more details on the race in the Gold Coast report. The month ended with another race at the Sydney Harbour 10km which might have been a slower pace than the half marathon, again there's more on that in the Sydney report. In between the races I had some disappointing slow parkruns, and a new event at North Sydney.

Some other running related activities:

• Nike Zoom Fly 5 purchased a second pair from Gold Coast
• Nike shorts, race singlet, and socks purchased online
• Run Prix 10km registered for September
• Melbourne Marathon 10km registered for October
• The event was displayed as sold out, then somehow it wasn't
• Now to wait a few months for a preferred start (37 minutes) response
• Singapore half marathon also submitted a preferred start for December
• The requirement is a very easy 1 hour 45 minutes

Another money section for this month. I'm making no gains from shares like usual but getting towards of the end of bill season:

• Hawaii football ticket $150
• Hawaii travel insurance due
• Luggage $250
• MCC annual membership $850 due

It feels like a long time since the Euro 2024 championships finished, as expected England were outplayed and lost in the final. Now we're in the middle of the Olympics which has mostly been swimming for the first week, and Australian gold medals mostly coming from the women's side. The European timeslot is probably the worst, it should be a little better for Los Angeles since we're closer to a full day ahead. The event replay videos have been quite good from Channel 9, being able to rewatch some finals without spoilers.

The to do list is mostly dominated by holidays again:

• Holiday reports
• Gold Coast
• Sydney
• Holidays
• Hawaii planning started
• Should be much easier than usual with only one location and limited transport needs
• USA travel waiver confirmed
• Running holidays
• Already starting to look into options for the first half of 2025, none confirmed yet
• Hobart Run The Bridge in March
• Japan Gifu half marathon in April if it's not complicated and not expensive
• Launceston in June
• Gold Coast in July

Had a fun couple of days at work thanks to the Crowd Strike outage. Like most people my computer was crashing at the login screen and I had to wait for a bit locker recovery key to repair it. At least that was a bit of excitement as there's still not much else happening.

That's it for this month.

• Books
• None
• Movies
• None
• Music
• None
• TV
• The Mole USA 2022 season 1
• Hate how every competitor tries to lose on purpose as a distraction
• The winner ends up with almost no money as a result
• 5 out of 10
• Video Games
• Nintendo Switch
• Golf Story
• Had purchased this online a long time ago but forgot about it
• The courses and levelling are fun but not enough depth
• Some of the side quests are good but otherwise are a bit pointless
• 6 out of 10
• Xbox 360
• Gears Of War 2
• Just resumed playing
• The long replays from checkpoints after dying is a bit annoying