SA 2020, December 31

I was a bit worried about a very sore hamstring from yesterday's driving, so did a slightly shorter 11 kilometre run in the morning. I went from the hotel up to Blue Lake and around, but didn't realise it was going to be quite so steep during the lake loop, not really what I was hoping for.

Got packed up and departed the hotel for a quick tour around Mt Gambier before heading on to the next destination. Started with the Umpherston Sinkhole which is a big hole in the ground, lots of plants at the bottom and hanging off the walls - not something you see every day.

Umpherston Sinkhole

A short drive up the hill to Blue Lake for a better view, it has quite an impressive bright blue colour, not sure if there is a story behind it. Another drive across to Valley Lake which is more of a blue-green color. There was a small enclosed conservation area that was claiming to have lots of animals to see, all I got was one kangaroo. I hadn't noticed before how loud they smash into the ground when they hop away.

The Blue Lake

Above the lake is a trail up to the Centenary Tower, it's just a small tower building and it wasn't open, so it's just a viewpoint above the town. That was it for Mt Gambier as I had a lot of driving to do again today, and everyday - I wasn't too excited about the amount of driving involved in my plan, but there was a bit of a reason for it, and I wanted to split up the driving as evenly as possible. 

Valley Lake

Time to settle in for a long drive to Kingston SE, a couple of hours and a good spot for a lunch break. Nothing much memorable along the way, a couple of cars driving ridiculously slow like 20+ kilometres under the speed limit. Another dingo encounter, this one didn't even react to the car coming, but it was far enough away to not be a problem.

The strangely named Kingston SE is a standard small beach town, I wasted a bit too much time driving around looking for somewhere to get lunch, then found a good bakery right across the road from The Big Lobster, so I should have just started there. Somehow I forgot to check if there was any magnets for sale at The Big Lobster place before leaving.

The Big Lobster

Back in the car for afternoon driving, getting really warm after being parked in the sun for a while. This time I was a bit more sensible with not driving too long, and had another break in Meningie and then finishing the day in Murray Bridge, after a minor detour past The Big Olive in Tailem Bend.

The Big Olive, should it be The Big Olives ?

The injuries from yesterday all seemed ok, instead a new pain under my left knee which is a common issue, probably from sitting with my leg extended all day. Pretty tired again, but had enough energy to walk up to the top of the main street to find a Mexican restaurant and a supermarket. Back to the hotel again for another BBL match on TV, not sure if any of these games were memorable but it's something to watch at least.

I thought Murray Bridge would be a unlikely place for fireworks, but I heard some going off during the evening, although couldn't see anything from the hotel windows.

SA 2020, December 30

I waited until the last minute due to possible travel restrictions, before eventually deciding on a quick four day trip to the eastern region of South Australia. Leaving after lunch at about 1pm, I was expecting to arrive in Mt Gambier somewhere around 6pm, then I remembered the 30 minutes due to the time zone differences which was a nice bonus.

After the usual slow traffic getting across the city it was good driving the rest of the way to Ballarat. The main traffic signs suggested going through Ballarat to reach Hamilton, while the GPS was saying to go all the way to Ararat first. This GPS often gives weird suggestions which are quite different to common sense and Google Maps, but I decided to go with it.

Just before getting to Ararat I was about to reach a convoy stuck behind a truck carrying a boat, so that was a good time to stop for a break, fuel, and pineapple donut. My lower back was feeling quite sore, but legs weren't so bad thanks to cruise control.

The route from Ararat to Hamilton was quite deserted, just a few cars coming the other way. I should have stopped for another break in Hamilton but decided to go a bit further. The GPS again appeared to give some alternative route through Dartmoor, I was hanging out for a good rest stop that never came. Had my first encounter with a dingo (maybe) that just froze in the middle of the road, lucky no traffic so I was able to quickly drive around it.

Finally got to stop about 25 kilometres before Mt Gambier, feeling really beat up from close to 3 hours of driving. Found the hotel, then got the news I'd missed while driving all afternoon that Victoria's 60+ days with no coronavirus was over. The opposite situation would have been much worse, if some cases had appeared in SA and there was a risk of being stuck or having to do some period of isolation.

I went out for a quick walk around the town centre, past the small Cave Garden sinkhole, and got some food for dinner. Then back to the hotel to watch some BBL and rest for another big day tomorrow.

Cave Garden

2020 Goals

This is long overdue but I drafted them out probably in early February. A lot of these will be impossible now, which would not have been imaginable at the time.

• Blog
• 50 posts - try to add a few more photos
• Car
• Retire the old Mitsubishi Lancer
• Fitness
• Bike
• A small number of bike rides would be a starting point
• Run
• 5km - 18:00
• 10km - 37:30 is about a PB time
• 21km - two races and a PB
• Total Distance - 2500-3000 kilometres
• Parkrun - 10 new events
• Races
• 5 new events
• 1 international events - either NZ or Singapore
• 2 interstate events - already missed two Hobart options
• Weight
• 70kg
• Food
• Healthy options besides fruit
• Holiday
• One short interstate or international holiday
• One longer international holiday
• Probably South East Asia like Cambodia, Vietnam etc.
• House
• Hopefully, at least have decided on an area and made some progress
• Money
• Shares
• Depends on house - don't want to cash in everything for a deposit
• 10% given strong performance last year
• Super
• 10% including contributions
• New contributions will have less impact as (when) the total increases
• Music
• 5 is best case scenario - one planned so far
• Reading
• 5 books
• Sport
• AFL
• Cricket world cup - maybe
• NBL finals - if Sydney qualifies
• Study
• 1 exam perhaps, depending on work projects
• To Do List
• No major goals besides this list
• Video Games
• Install Nintendo Switch
• 5 games finished
• Work
• Promotion hopefully

2019 Review

A bit overdue for the yearly, although it's not much more than a summary of each monthly.

These were some of the traceable 2019 goals I put down, before I come up with similar ones for 2020...

• Blog (50%)
• 26 out of 50
• Had no holidays so just consists of monthly reports and a bit of running
• Car (100%)
• Finally decided to go with a Mitsubishi Lancer 2017
• Good enough for the amount of driving I do, and more comfortable than the old one
• Fitness
• Bike (0%)
• None
• Run (75%)
• I've put more details in the 2019 running review
• 5km was right on my target time of 18:00
• 10km was also close to my target time of 37:30
• 21km improved PB by 30 seconds, hoped to get a little closer to 1 hour 20 minutes
• Only did one half marathon instead of two
• Total distance just missed due to injuries to finish the year
• 13 of 10 new parkrun events
• 0 of 1 international events
• 0 of 2 interstate events due to last minute Gold Coast injuries
• Weight (10%)
• Still stuck around 75 kg instead of 70 kg
• Food (0%)
• Haven't changed much to help with fitness and weight
• Holiday (25%)
• 0 of 1 international holidays
• 2 small interstate holidays
• Brisbane 3 days and Gold Coast 2 days barely counts
• House (0%)
• None
• Money (100%)
• Shares
• Hard to calculate exactly due to extra investments
• Close enough to 50% recovery from late 2019, optimistic aim was 25%
• Investment loan also recovered to about 10% profit
• Super
• Hard to calculate also due to contributions
• Possibly up 20% which was the goal, a third of that is probably new contributions
• Extra 3% contributions
• Music (20%)
• 1 of 5 events
• September - Apocalyptica at Hamer Hall
• Reading (0%)
• None
• Sport (75%)
• No goals really
• March - NBL finals
• August - Australia vs USA basketball
• September - AFL grand final
• Study (0%)
• 0 of 2 exams
• To Do List (50%)
• Just wanted to get all of the larger 2018 and 2019 tasks done
• Most of these have been listed already
• Yes
• New car
• New Garmin watch
• Super contribution
• No
• Holidays
• House
• Video Games (50%)
• Opened Xbox One at last
• Haven't opened Nintendo Switch yet, can only do one at a time anyway
• Did not quite finish five games:
• Xbox 360
• GRID 2
• Final Fantasy XIII - Lightning Returns
• Xbox One
• Forza Horizon 4
• Forza Horizon 3 almost
• Work (25%)
• Had a good variety of projects is a small success
• No promotion this year and project positions haven't been ideal

And similar to the monthly reports I'll end with a few favourites for the year:

• Movies
• Parasite
• Us
• TV
• Atlanta
• Rosehaven
• The Amazing Race
• The Challenge
• Video Games
• None were a standout - too much achievement grinding

2019 Running Review

A reasonable year in running, no major injuries but a lot of annoying smaller ones.

• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015

The totals were almost the same as the previous year:

• 3031.52 kilometres
• 3065.56 kilometres in 2018
• 3120.94 kilometres in 2015
• 231 hours
• 232 hours in 2018
• 235 hours in 2015

The major events for the years were:

• January
• Rosebud Australia Day Run - 10 km - 38:55 @ 3:55/km
• February
• Warburton - 10km - 38:06 @ 3:54/km
• March
• Run The Rock - 13.5km - 54:57 @ 4:03/km
• April
• Sri Chinmoy Princes Park - 10 km - 38:41 @ 3:54/km
• May
• Puffing Billy Train Race - 13.5km - 55:40 @ 4:08/km
• June
• Sri Chinmoy Albert Park - 10km - 37:41 - 3:48/km
• July
• Run Melbourne - 10 km - 38:49 @ 3:53/km
• August
• de Castella - 15km - 59:16 @ 3:59/km
• September
• Sandy Point - 10km - 37:58 @ 3:47/km
• Harvest Run - 13.5 km - 53:53 @ 4:02/km (hills)
• October
• Melbourne Marathon - 21km - 1:22:53 @ 3:53/km
• November
• Ballarat Run For A Cause - 10km - 36:57 @ 3:45/km (short)

It was slow progress, but towards the middle and end of the year I made some minor improvements to record new best times for 5 kilometre parkrun, 10 kilometre and half marathon. Having an ongoing hamstring injury and dealing with the summer heat, I have to try and not lose all the fitness going into the new year like often happens.

The parkrun summary:

• 52 events
• 47 in 2018
• 48 in 2017
• 13 new events
• 10 in 2018
• 18 in 2017
• 18:03 - Lilydale Lake and 18:04 - Frog Hollow
• 18:16 - Lilydale Lake in 2018

The new parkrun events were:

• January
• Mernda
• February
• KM Reedy Reserve
• April
• Pakenham
• Euroa
• Mansfield Botanic
• July
• Surfers Paradise
• August
• Brimbank
• Birdsland Reserve
• September
• Lancefield
• October
• Wyndham Vale
• November
• Zillmere
• Rosebud
• December
• You Yangs

Brisbane 2019

November 01
November 02
November 03
November 04

Brisbane 2019, November 04

Had a later start, wasn't sure if I was going to run in the morning but decided to give it a go.

I started from the Botanical Gardens and went across the bridge to South Bank and back. The surface wasn't great, most of the way it was just hard footpaths. So not a great run but actually started feeling better at the end, usually I never do more than six days of running in a row but this was seven.

Hotel breakfast again, but no yoghurt!

Since I was quite tired I decided to do a bit less for the day, even had time for a quick overdue haircut on the way to Myer Centre so see what movies were showing. I wasn't really interested in Joker or another Terminator, so picked Ready Or Not instead. It seemed like a bit of a copy of Get Out, but not the worst.

Got some lunch and walked over to Roma Street parklands. A better city park but a lot of hills. Probably the hottest day and just a lot of fatigue had built up from the previous days, so had to stop for a break a few times.

Roma Street parklands.

Walked back to Queen Street mall and then got a train to Fortitude Valley. The good thing about the trains is most seats face one way, so you aren't squashed in directly across from someone like the stupid Melbourne trains.

There wasn't much going on at Fortitude Valley, although it's only one stop from the city centre. It supposed to be Chinatown, but didn't find one Asian bakery. Found a place with the best selection of USA soft drinks so far though.

That was about it for the day, back to the hotel to pack for an early flight home...

25,000 steps including 10km running.

And then got a text message at 5:30am saying the plane was delayed 1.5 hours! Which was then changed to 2 hours after I left for the airport. Add another hour for the daylight savings difference, and I didn't end up getting home until 4:00pm, almost an entire day gone.

Brisbane 2019, November 03

Back on another early train to Toombul at about 6:30am. I mapped out a route on the Kedron Brook bike way which also included some wetlands, although the wetlands were only a couple of kilometres each way of the 17 kilometres return trip. Sometimes I could run on the grass next to the bike path but often it was too step.

Back to the hotel for breakfast, about the same as the previous day.

Got a bus from the city to Mt Coot-Tha through the suburbs. I got off at the last stop which was the lookout at the top of the mountain, good views of Brisbane. There's quite a few tracks to explore around the mountain but I'd already run in the morning so started on the downhill track to the botanic gardens. The path down was paved stones, a lot better than concrete. There was supposed to be koalas around but didn't even see one.

The lookout.

Had about 45 minutes to look around the botanical gardens, otherwise was well over an hour between buses. Some good variety in this place, much better than the city version, except these was some bad looking spiders in all the trees along the paths. Some of the better places were cactus land, Japanese garden, Bonsai house and kind-of rainforest.

Some plants.

Got some lunch back in the city, stopped off at the hotel to watch the end of an NBA game and download Match Of The Day for later - 1 MB per second is unheard of in a hotel.

Walked to the city ferry terminal, thought I just missed a ferry, which was correct, but was also at the wrong terminal. If there's two piers next to each other on Eagle Street, maybe don't name one of them Eagle Street pier.

The end of the ferry was also the start of the river walk back to the city. It's like a foot bridge along the river, a good idea except more concrete! Too tired to walk much more so got the ferry in the opposite direction which went across to south bank and then finished at the north side, closer to the city centre.

The river walk.

The public transport card doesn't seem to be great value, no daily limit and you only get a discounted rate after eight trips in a week, except it resets each Monday which was no use for me.

35,000 steps including 17 km running

Brisbane 2019, November 02

Had to set my alarm too early at 5:30am, but wasn't feeling too tired in the morning. The reason for the early start is the parkrun starts at 7:00am in Queensland due to the temperatures.

The trains to my destination Zillmere were only running every half hour which didn't really coincide with parkrun, there were closer options but it's the only Z parkrun in Australia so had to cross it off the list, and the course looked good too - grass instead of the usual concrete for most suburban locations.

I decided to arrive 45 minutes early instead of 15 minutes, which was a good idea as I was able to do a longer warm up and figure out the course. It was a lot of open grass fields, so it was a little more complicated than the usual course.

From the start some guy took off way ahead - like usual I thought I was due for another second place finish - 17th firsts and 21 seconds in total, not as bad as I expected. However I managed to jump into the lead during the first kilometre and finished about two minutes ahead, so nothing to worry about. I think I might have cut one corner a little, but the watch recorded 4.98 kilometres.

Zillmere parkrun.

Had a bit of time for cool down before the train back - it's definitely good to check the trains times first, saves waiting around at the station for 20 plus minutes. The buffet breakfast at the hotel was not bad, some good muesli and mixed berries with yoghurt.

Just enough time to get another train to Toombul then a short bus trip over to Brisbane Airport DFO. The DFO wasn't quite open yet so checked out the Woolworths for any different products. Nothing much except a new range of Oak flavoured milks had been released, the Chokito one was decent but ridiculously packed with sugar, far too sweet.

The DFO was open, started at the Nike store of course. They had three different colours of Pegasus Turbo but 12.5 was the largest. Found some regular Pegasus 36 for half price though so worth the trip. Didn't find much at the other stores so got the bus back.

Had only done a little bit of walking, but my left shin was already really sore. It's a constant problem I have on every holiday from too much walking, always the first place where pain starts. So took a break and found some lunch in the shopping centre, then walked across the road to Kedron Brook. It's part of a long bike track but looked like it had some potential for running also.

After lunch went back to the hotel on the train to drop off the shoes, but the TV remote wasn't working! I was only stopping in for a few minutes anyway so asked the reception to have it fixed.

The hotel was walking distance to the CBD, so just did a bit of exploring for the afternoon, since I haven't been to Brisbane in more than 20 years I think.

The city seemed to have a few more older buildings maybe, like the Anzac Square and City Hall. Stopped in at a few shops in Queen Street mall and found a magnet eventually.

A.N.Z.A.C.

Ended up at the 'city' version of botanic gardens - lots of runners but no tan track, so a bit disappointing overall. An observation already, hundreds of people on rental scooters everywhere, and they can go pretty quick too so you have to be careful. I'm guessing they work better in Brisbane as the city is smaller and a bit less congested, and there is a better path around the outside of the city to use them on.

Kangaroo Point cliffs.

I walked across the pedestrian bridge to South Bank, which I found out later was part of the city parkrun course - doesn't seem like it would be a very good route though. Had a bit of rain so stopped for another rest which was long overdue, then found a banana stand and Ahmet's Turkish restaurant!

South Bank.

Finished walking along South Bank which seems like a good place, man-made beaches and swimming pools and lots of restaurants. Back across the bridge at the other end to the CBD again, most shops were starting to close.

I found a Mexican restaurant near the hotel, ordered a burrito but they put the sour cream 'on' the burrito and the guacamole beside it. Worst constructed burrito ever.

What is this?

Got back to the hotel with some time to rest and watch some NBA and NBL on TV.

32,000 steps including 10.25 km running

Brisbane 2019, November 01

A weekend to Brisbane is all the holiday I could arrange at the moment.

Finished work a bit early, train to Southern Cross and bus to airport. Did not regret driving as the traffic was not going anywhere during the late afternoon.

Had about an hour to waste at the airport, not too bad. The plane was expected to be delayed 15 minutes, then more delays due to high winds and limited runways. In the line for the plane I realised I had forgotten to pack one thing in a hurry, the USB drive with some shows to watch on the tablet. I suppose there could have been worth things to forget.

So finally left about 30 minutes late, and a new great plane story, stuck between two tradies. I'm not sure if they purposely picked the aisle and window, otherwise it's quite a coincidence they would be in the same row. So add to this to the list of annoying things on a plane flight, two idiots having a conversation over you.

One good thing about Brisbane, it has an airport train! It only leaves every 30 minutes in off-peak times, which is not ideal, but better than nothing. It took about 25 minutes to get into Central Station, which is probably no quicker than the Melbourne Sky Bus at that time of day.

I had a short walk to the hotel, no problems, so just the usual then - about 7 hours to complete a 2 hour flight and connecting travel.

The hotel seemed decide, a good collection of Fox sports channels and they didn't even cheap out and skip ESPN.